


The Descent

by Minim



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-03
Updated: 2014-08-22
Packaged: 2017-12-31 10:07:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 31,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1030419
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Minim/pseuds/Minim
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The way they paint it in books and films, you can lose your mind and people will stick around. You can make mistakes and you can be a bad person but those closest to you will understand and when you sort yourself out, when you are proved right, they’ll still be there to pick up where you left off. Jimmy Novak is about to find out that that might not strictly be true</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter One

There are a couple of things that no person wants to wake up to in the mornings. For Jimmy Novak there was a very clear hierarchy of things that he did not want to encounter. Top of the list was shuffling downstairs to establish that they had run out of coffee. That was unholy on several levels. Second was burnt toast. Jimmy had long ago resigned himself to the fact that their toaster was possessed. The settings remained the same, but some days the toast would just burn. Those were rarely good days. The final part in the trio of hellish awakenings was broken shoe laces. 

Ok. So, it wasn’t a permanent member of the trio. However, on that particular morning it certainly was. Jimmy’s wife, Amelia, had already left that morning to take their daughter to school. Jimmy knew that this decreased his chances of finding a new shoe lace to absolutely zero. He couldn’t even begin to guess where Amelia might keep something like that. If she even kept things like that. He had searched through all the obvious places, the box of shoe polishes in the hall closet, the draw of odds and ends in the kitchen, all the drawers in the utility room…none of them had yielded results. He stood in the hall way, shoe in one hand, broken lace clenched in the other staring anxiously at the clock on the wall which told him that he had to leave soon or he would be late for work. He sighed and examined the broken lace and show again. He wasn’t entirely sure that even if he could find a new lace he would know how to thread it back onto the shoe. That kind of thing was very much Amerlia’s department and for a moment he was slightly embarrassed at his ineptness. Here he was. A grown man foiled by a shoe lace. He chuckled to himself. The DIY approach, it was the only way. He knotted the two broken ends of the laces together, problem solved, so long as no one took too much time examining his shoes he was sure no one would even notice. 

He left for work, feeling buoyed by his little DIY triumph. Amelia would laugh when he told her this story. Jimmy was not exactly famous for his handiwork. Jimmy sold advertising spaces for a media company. He had worked for them for most of his career. He had started out in a cubicle fielding enquiries and working on the more hum drum admin tasks that the advertising department required. Over the years he had moved up the ranks. He was now senior enough to have his own office. He had primary responsibility for everything related to radio advertising. He actually talked to clients. He arranged meetings and liaised with people. When deals were made and people signed contracts, his name appeared on the paperwork. He liked that. It didn’t matter to him that radio was not the most lucrative avenue for the company and that, as a result his work was often undervalued. He just liked seeing his name on the paperwork and the satisfaction of filling all his available slots.

From his office he could see into the office of the director of their department. The office had been refurbished a year or two previously. The architect who had met with them to discuss the designs had said that he wanted the office space to reflect the spirit of openness and cooperation that the company sought to embody. As a result the offices were now essentially little glass boxes. Jimmy’s office was at the end of the row with his bosses on his immediate left. Some people might not have liked that. Jimmy didn’t mind so much, he was at the end of the row of offices which had the advantage that he had a solid wall to his right. He thought that was compensation enough for having to be right next to his boss.

On that particular day he was yet again convinced that he was perfectly happy in his role. His boss, Mr David Wilson, did not look like he was having a good day. As Jimmy settled in at his desk he wondered whether Mr Wilson had suffered through the full trilogy of morning mishaps. It certainly looked that way. It was barely 9am and Mr Wilson’s face was already flushed as he shouted into the phone. As he slammed the phone down he caught Jimmy’s eye. Jimmy waved a sympathetic greeting. Mr Wilson waved back with a little more aggression than politeness before turning to type furiously, composing an email in an inbox with a flashing unread number that looked suspiciously like it was hitting three figures. Yes, Jimmy was perfectly happy with his role. He liked not having 5 separate teams of people reporting to him. He liked that he was reporting to someone who was the person who had to liaise with the powers that be rather than having to liaise with them himself. He liked the fact that, when he opened his email, he only had 25 emails awaiting his attention.

Lily, his department’s secretary, knocked on his glass in a way that was very much reminiscent of a person visiting a zoo. She was a bright, bubbly young woman in her mid-twenties. Her fluffy blonde hair, slim figure and the high waisted pencil skirts and tight fitting blouses she wore made her very popular around the office. Jimmy was aware of at least 3 disastrous workplace romances so far this year. She was holding a stack of files in her arms that she clearly wanted to add to his workload. With a sigh, he waved her in.

“Morning Mr Novak!” she said brightly, “How are you toady?”

“I’m just fine Lily. How are you?”

“Great!” It was a running departmental joke that Lily had a 24/7 caffeine IV inserted somewhere that kept her so chipper. The exact location of the IV varied depending on who was telling the joke. There had been more than one occasion where Jimmy had had to have words with people when the jokes got out of line. Lily never seemed to care. Nothing dented her mood. “So, we’ve had a lot of enquiries regarding the next season of ads on the classical station,” she said, slapping several of the files down on his desk, “they’ve all been catalogued for you to look at. And here is the file on the companies the analysts think we should approach,” this file was another colour as it sailed down onto Jimmy’s desk, “And this…” she was still holding one file, “this is a tricky one.”

Jimmy raised his eyebrows. Lily was clutching the file tightly, as though she really didn’t want to hand it over. She was still smiling in her normal cheerful fashion, but there was certainly an apologetic note to it that hadn’t been there before. She knew full well that she was handing him something that was going to make his day more difficult and she didn’t like it. 

Jimmy leaned back in his chair, smiling comfortingly at her, “Tricky how?”

“Well you remember two seasons ago when that extremist group wanted to buy an advertising space to,” she sketched quotation marks in the air, “show people that their sin is condemning civilisation.”

“I do. If I remember rightly, some of the messages they wanted to broadcast were a little colourful.”

“They were!” she said, and he thought they were both thinking of the one that involved graphic descriptions of what the authors wanted to do to one or two more flamboyant celebrities. The meeting where those messages were discussed were definitely top of Jimmy’s list of ‘meetings he hoped would never repeat themselves. Ever. Ever.’

“So…” he prompted her, once they had both finished reliving that little memory. 

“Well here’s another one,” she brandished the file. 

Jimmy took it from her, “Thanks Lily.”

She beamed at him before wishing him a good day and striding out of the office. Danny, a flashy man with a decidedly seedy reputation from the television department was waiting at the door for her. Jimmy sighed as he saw her stop to talk to him. He frowned in a fatherly fashion and hoped sincerely that she might learn to give her favours out a little more selectively. For her sake. 

He shook himself. It wasn’t his concern and he shouldn’t be distracting himself by thinking about the private life of one of his colleagues. He turned his attention to the file in front of him. The particular group in question seemed to be some kind of Seventh-Day Adventists. At least, he could only assume that was the case considering the outline of their advertising campaign. They wanted to raise awareness of the apocalypse which was apparently imminent. They were attempting to raise awareness of official cover ups. They cited several cases in recent years where pockets of deaths had only been superficially or unsatisfactorily explained. The official explanations ranged from gas explosions to mass suicides. This advertising campaign blamed demon possession and monsters. He could see from the file that one of his team had had extensive email correspondence with the company. The initial prescribed rejection had been sent, ‘We’re very sorry, but we don’t think our company would be best suited to your needs’ and ignored. Whoever was on the other end of the exchange was certainly persistent. It was the repeated insistence that the client would pay above and beyond the standard fee that had eventually persuaded the person at the computer to escalate the file to Jimmy. 

Jimmy sighed. Cases like this were a moral dilemma for the company. On the one hand there was the money making drive which said just take the money and be damned of the consequences but they had to be careful. If they ran the wrong adverts then they might offend people. Offend too many people, get too many complaints and the circulation of their publication or broadcast would decrease. That meant less money in the long run. So they had to toe a line. Sometimes controversial was good, but they had to make sure it was the right kind of controversial. He wasn’t sure this was it, but he would pitch it to Mr Wilson and see what he thought…when he thought the man could handle it. Perhaps once he’d had a coffee break. So he put the file in his in tray and turned his attention to the more straightforward cases. The cases where he simply had to decide how much time the company could offer, what slots and for what price. 

By lunch time Jimmy was becoming aware that he was well below his normal efficiency level. He was distracted, his mind was wondering. His mind was wondering to what he had read in the file that morning. In an effort to refocus he decided to leave the office to buy lunch. There was a small café up the street. They sold some of the best lemon cake that Jimmy had ever tasted. 

Jimmy’s office was in the small business district of Pontiac, Illinois. Small in this case meant that it consisted of about four blocks. Jimmy’s was the only building that was more than three stories high and by far the most modern since the refurbishment. The streets were quiet, but not as quiet as they might have been. The business district was directly adjacent to Pontiac’s small, downtown shopping district and at their edges the two had mingled slightly. The café Jimmy was heading for sat on the corner of the main intersection that marked the primary divide between the two. Sadly Jimmy was not the only person who knew how good their lemon cake was, so there was always a sizeable queue.   
On this occasion, Jimmy really didn’t mind. It felt good to be out of the office. And the lemon cake was totally worth the wait. He even bought three extra slices to take home with him so that they could each have a slice for desert that evening. It was a nice interlude but it didn’t totally solve the problem. Jimmy did know what was making him anxious. His faith was an integral part of himself, but it was not an unquestioning faith. Jimmy was profoundly troubled by certain theological issues. He was preoccupied by them in a way that he wasn’t always sure was healthy.

One of the thorniest points in Jimmy’s belief system was the existence of the devil and all that came with it. He believed in God, he believed that his son Jesus Christ came to Earth, died for his sins and then rose again. He believed in walking on water, in turning water into wine, he believed that Jesus rose Lazarus from the death…ok he was a little sceptical of the feeding of the five thousand and he thought that the world being created in seven days was probably a metaphor. The point was that he believed. He believed the Bible was the word of God and he believed its contents. But then there was the devil. Jimmy had always struggled with the devil. When Jesus was tempted in the desert, Jimmy was hard pushed to imagine that it was a literal devil and not just a metaphor for some dark human part of Jesus himself. Yet he worried that he should believe.   
Whenever Jimmy heard of other people’s faith in the existence of the devil and demonic forces, a niggling doubt was raised in his mind that perhaps these people were more faithful. Perhaps these people were better Christians than he was. Perhaps…well after that he would normally fall into the depths of self-doubt and start to worry that perhaps he was not on the path of the righteous and that his lack of faith would stop his admission to heaven. Or, perhaps, in not believing in the existence of the devil he was inviting the devil in with his complacency. He worried. 

Once he was back at his desk after his lunch time interlude, he worried specifically about the file that lay in his in tray waiting to be taken to Mr Wilson. He worried that perhaps this was some kind of test. Here lay an opportunity for him to use his position to spread a Gospel word to the masses and he wasn’t taking it. His faith did not often present a conflict with his work. He worked in radio advertising for Christ’s sake. Or perhaps that was the point. He didn’t work there for Christ’s sake, he worked there for his own sake and for the advancement of his own materialistic interests. Perhaps that was being tested. 

Jimmy sat in his comfortable office chair, in his office that looked like a tank at the zoo, pretending to work but with his eyes constantly wandering to the file. The day that had started badly with the broken show lace was reaching crisis point at mid-afternoon with a crisis of faith tinged with the taste of lemon. So Jimmy prayed. Jimmy was a great believer in the power of prayer. It cleansed the mind and it calmed the soul. Today, Jimmy prayed a prayer that was as familiar to him as breathing. He prayed for certainty.   
Jimmy had faith, complete and total faith. However, faith was not the same as certainty. Jimmy prayed for certainty. He prayed for a sign. Heavenly father. Let me know you. Father, show yourself to me. Speak to me. It was his constant prayer and his dearest wish to be shown the existence of the Lord in some straightforward fashion. In some unmistakable way. The seeing of which would convert even the greatest non believer. He knew it would never happen. He wasn’t anything special. There was no reason for God to take the time to manifest himself to him. Jimmy wasn’t going to serve any kind of purpose in God’s grand plan, he knew that. He was just an average guy, working an average job, living an average life. A life that he loved, but one that was totally average all the same. The prayer that he said always gave him the power to remember that, recognise that and release some of his doubts. The ad campaign wasn’t a test. It was just an ad campaign. If God wanted the world to know about the demon invasion he wouldn’t be doing it by trying to advertise on the least popular radio station in Illinois. 

He took the file in to Mr Wilson at three O’clock. Mr Wilson scowled, “why do these people always come to us?” he said grouchily gesturing for Jimmy to take a seat.   
Jimmy shrugged but didn’t offer a comment. Mr Wilson had turned a strange shade of purple of the course of the day having had at least four other phone calls that ended with him screaming at whoever was on the other end of the phone so loudly that Jimmy had been able to hear it in his office. Jimmy was relatively sure that if he were pushed any further his head might explode. 

“So what do you think?” Mr Wilson asked, leaning back in his chair, “radio suitable nutjobs or just nutjobs?” 

“Not radio suitable,” said Jimmy firmly.

Mr Wilson nodded his agreement slowly, but his finger was tapping one of the figures quoted in the emails, “that’s an awful lot of money though.”

“Running adverts like that is just going to turn off our listeners. The circulation will shrink, we’ll get less for the advertising next year over all.”

Mr Wilson grunted again, “Radio’s prophets are going downhill anyways. Might as well make the money while we can.”

Jimmy bristled slightly, “profits are up on three of our stations!” he said defensively. 

His boss chuckled in response, leaning forward to place his elbows on the desk with a less than endearing smile on his face. Jimmy’s sympathy for his bosses position was diminishing rapidly. “Chill out man, I’m just teasing you. You’re probably right. It’s not worth the hassle.”

“So you’ll contact them?”

“Yeah. I’ll send a word of power from the top. Get them to stop contacting us. Just leave it with me.”

Jimmy was quite glad to get out of the office. He bumped into Lily in the hallway. She grinned at him, “he’s in a terrible mood,” she whispered conspiratorially.

“Yeah. He been taking it out on you too?”

She giggled, “He’s been taking it out on everyone. He made the new girl in finance cry.”

“Really? That’s awful,” said Jimmy, aghast. 

Lily nodded, but more seriously now that she’d seen how disapproving Jimmy was of the situation, “I know. It’s terrible. She was so upset.”

Jimmy was saved replying because at that moment Danny walked past and Lily was distracted by flashing her widest smile at him. He smiled back and touched her hand briefly as he passed. She seemed so smitten that the most she could do after that was say, “See you tomorrow Mr Novak!” before scurrying after him. 

The first thing that hit him as he opened his front door was the warm rich smell of something roasting in the oven. Hearing the door open and close his wife called out to tell him that she was in the kitchen. On his way to her he stuck his head into the TV room where, sure enough, Claire was curled up under a blanket on the sofa partly doing her homework, partly watching some sort of reality program on the TV and partly playing with her phone. She smiled up at him guiltily. She was well aware that her father didn’t approve of the kind of trashy TV she was washing and even more aware that above all else he did not approve of homework being done while TV was being watched. 

“I’ll turn it off right after this is over,” she promised. 

Jimmy chuckled and crossed the room to drop a quick kiss on the top of her head, “It’s ok sweetie. Just make sure you get some proper work done after dinner, ok?”

“Ok Dad,” then her phone chirped and she dropped her head to attend to it. Well aware that his chances of getting her attention back were very low he headed through to the kitchen.

Amelia was stirring vegetables on the stove while some of her marking lay open on the work surface next to her, she taught high school history. She was rubbing a pen along her cheek as she read a pupils essay her lips moving in time to the words. It was one of the habits Jimmy absolutely loved about her. He walked up behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist, hugged her and kissed her neck softly. She smiled and laughed, telling him off for distracting her. He gave her one last squeeze before releasing her and heading over to the fridge to grab himself a drink. 

“You know I’m regretting getting Claire that phone,” he said, pouring out some orange juice. 

Amelia chuckled, “is it starting to fuse to her hand?”

“Not far off it.”

“She’s a teenager now. She’s not interested in talking to her Dad any more.”

Jimmy huffed, “she was still interested a few weeks ago!” Claire had turned 13 three weeks before and seemed to have taken her transition from child to teenager very seriously. Or, as Jimmy now suspected, their giving her a cell phone had forced her transformation. Jimmy was not happy about the idea of his little girl growing up. Not happy at all. 

“Give her a few years, she’ll come back to us,” said Amelia, wise after many years of dealing with teenagers day in day out, “And trust me, whenever things go wrong for her you’ll be Daddy again in an instant.”

“I don’t want things to go wrong for her!”

She threw up her hands in mock despair, “there’s no pleasing some people,” she said, playfully throwing a dish cloth at him.

“Sorry! I brought lemon cake for desert,” he said, by way of apology. 

“Ah well, then all is forgiven! Will you call Claire? Dinner’s ready and she can lay the table.”

As Jimmy sat down to dinner with his family, and they took hands to say grace, thoughts of demons and hell were far from his mind. But when he said his prayers that evening, he still inserted the same old request for some kind of sign from the Lord. It was just habit.


	2. Chapter Two

Chapter Two

“Jimmy. Jimmy. Wake up sweetheart.”

Jimmy could feel someone shaking him up and out of his dream. It was a nice dream. There was sunshine. He really didn’t want to leave it. He had the horrible impression that it was very early. Too early.

“Jimmy,” the voice and the shake became slightly more insistent. They both started to sound and feel an awful lot more like a less than pleased wife. 

He rolled over onto his back and looked up at her. She was sitting on the edge of the bed fully dressed and leaning across to shake him. The curtains were still drawn and the only light was filtering in from the hallway, “Did I sleep through the alarm?” he asked, rubbing his eyes tiredly. 

“No. I got a text from Beth,” Beth was Amelia’s boss, “There was an incident yesterday. Some of the kids from school were involved. She wants all staff to be in early so that we can have an emergency briefing.”

Jimmy sat up, face clouding with concern, “What kind of incident?”

“She didn’t say, but you’re going to have to take Claire to school this morning ok?” she lent down to give him a gentle kiss.

“Ok.”

“Make sure she has something good for breakfast. Not just that horrible marshmallow things!” She said, climbing off the bed and straightening her skirt.

“I will.”

“And if she asks for extra lunch money say no! She’ll only spend it on snacks and then she won’t want to eat any dinner.”

“Ok, got it.”

She was now standing at the end of the bed buttoning her jacket smiling at him as he settled his back against the head board, resigned now to being awake. 

“Make sure she takes a coat with her. She’ll say she’s warm enough but if it rains…”

“Amelia! Stop fussing. I know how to get Claire ready for school!” said Jimmy, with a certain amount of exasperation. He was not a hands off parent by any means. He made sure that he and Claire had time together every weekend. They would watch a movie, go to museums and art galleries or just go for a bike ride for something. He also had the less pleasant role of being the family’s ultimate disciplinarian. However it was true that Amelia took the primary responsibility for the more practical aspects of parenting. Amelia was the one who bought Claire’s clothes, kept track of her dentist’s appointments, taxied her around the place and organised her extracurricular activities. Jimmy knew this, but he was still a little hurt that Amelia would think he wasn’t capable of something as simple as getting Claire ready for school himself. 

She must have sensed that he was feeling something of the kind because she returned to the bed to give him another quick kiss, “I’m sorry Jimmy. You know how much of a control freak I can be. I’ll make it up to you later ok?”

Jimmy smiled at her and reached out to squeeze her hand, “Yeah ok. You’d better get going. I’ll take care of Claire.”

She gave him one final kiss and then she was gone.

Claire accepted the change in her routine with little comment. When Jimmy shook her awake half an hour later she had simply scrunched up her face in disgust at being wakened before asking,   
“Where’s Mom?” in sleepy tones, but without any real urgency.

“She had to go into work early,” he had replied. That had been enough. He had thought that he might treat her to a more elaborate breakfast than normal. He suggested making pancakes but Claire had just stared at him as if the suggestion was insane before selecting her usual cereal from the cupboard under the sink. Her hand had hovered over the marshmallow pack for a few moments, but, after glancing up and establishing that her father was watching her she had changed her mind and settled on the box of bran flakes instead. Jimmy wasn’t sure if he was pleased that she respected his authority or sad that it made her guarded in her behaviour.

“Tara Darrow is getting a new puppy today,” she said, conversationally as she brought her bowl to the kitchens central island and pulled herself up onto one of the high stools next to it. It made Jimmy smile that it was still a little bit of a struggle for her. She was still his little girl in a lot of ways. 

“Oh yeah?” Jimmy said, pouring her a glass of orange juice.

“Yeah! She already has two dogs. And a gerbil. And a whole load of fish.”

“Does she?”

“And her Dad said that if she gets good grades, at the end of this year he’ll buy her a horse instead of her having to borrow one from the stables,” she was eyeing her father with a calculating look as she said this. Jimmy, who had a good idea of where the conversation was heading, didn’t reply. “I don’t even have a cat,” she added.

“I know,” said Jimmy, with a wry smile.

Claire didn’t really know how to respond to that. These kind of discussion were normally had with Amelia and she had very a different style. She would have instantly voiced the unspoken request and quashed it just as quickly. Claire would have argued. She would have tried to argue and persuade her mother to talk to Jimmy about the situation. This was the standard resolution to the argument. Amelia would agree to ‘ask your Father’ about it and then Jimmy’s word was used as the word of law. Claire had sometimes suspected that things were not referred to Jimmy as promised so she had decided to take this opportunity to tackle him directly on this, one of the primary issues on her mind. She hadn’t expected him to just calmly agree with her assertions while being strategically blind to what she was implying. 

Jimmy relented, laughing, “We’ve had this conversation a couple of times before Claire,” he said gently. 

“I know! But…”

“No buts! No arguments! The answer right now is no,” Amelia was allergic to cats and had never been keen on dogs. Jimmy would have liked to have a dog, which was a discussion that Jimmy and Amelia were having between themselves and had been for a long while. But he wasn’t about to tell Claire that. 

Claire huffed. She pretended to be upset with him throughout the rest of breakfast. She kept up a determined stony silence throughout the short drive to school, starting out of the window with calculated fixation. However, at 13 her teenage skills were not quite as developed as they might be so when they pulled up outside her school she still kissed him on the cheek and wished him goodbye in her normal cheery voice. Jimmy drove away chuckling. 

****************

Lily was waiting outside his office door when he arrived. She was clutching a handful of papers to her chest and was, for once, studiously ignoring the attempts of the young men who were passing to engage her in conversation. He noted that, in walking past his office, several of these young men were taking routes to their desks that were not exactly direct. He could see why. Today’s outfit consisted of a fairly low cut form fitting dress that left little to the imagination. He decided then and there that Claire would never be allowed to leave the house in anything that in any way resembled any of Lily’s outfits. Ever. 

“Oh good Mr Novak, you’re here!” she said in slightly flustered tones.

“Hello Lily. Are you alright?” he beckoned her into his office as he spoke. He was juggling holding his bag, a travel mug full of coffee, an umbrella and his coat and he was desperate to drop one of them. He threw his coat onto the chair (it was a long   
beige trench coat. Amelia hated it.) and deposited the coffee on the desk. 

Lily stood by the desk, well really she was hovering, clutching the papers as if her life depended on it. “The team are quite upset,” she said slowly.

“Upset?” Jimmy’s eyebrows knitted together into a frown, “Upset about what?”

She squirmed slightly, eyes darting round the office, looking anywhere but at Jimmys face, “Wellll…”

“Well what?” he prompted, mystified as to what was turning his normally bubbly and cheerful departmental secretary into someone who was acting like they’d been thrown to the wolves. 

“They’ve gotten some pretty nasty emails.”

“From me?” asked Jimmy, adding incredulous and baffled to his repertoire of emotions. 

“No! No. Of course not,” she said, looking affronted that he would even suggest that she suggest that he would do such a thing.

“From who then?”

“Well you remember those people who wanted to advertise all the crazy demon stuff? The people you turned down yesterday?”

“I didn’t turn them down, Mr Wilson did. But yes, I remember.”

She looked a little confused, “the emails blame you!”

“What emails Lily?” Jimmy demanded, slipping into irritation now. 

“The ones they’ve been sending to all our staff telling them that they and their families are going to die horrible deaths because of you.”

Jimmy blinked. Replayed what he thought he’d just heard. Blinked again. 

“What???”

Lily finally released the papers from her grasp, laying them gingerly down on the desk   
in front of Jimmy as though they might catch fire or something. She spread the stack out so that Jimmy could see that they were print outs of emails. Lots of emails. From a quick scan he could see that they had been sent to everyone in the department, several to each address. They were short, often written in all caps and chilling to say the least. Some simply said things like ‘You will die, unbeliever’ while others were a little more biblical ‘you oppose the work of heaven and shall rot in hell for all eternity’ was a choice example of that breed. The worst ones were the graphic ones. Jimmy saw one that described how the recipient’s families would have their eyes torn from their heads and their organs pulled from their chests to be roasted on a fire while they still lived. That one made him shiver and he wasn’t even the target of it. 

He quickly looked out into the cubicles just outside his office in which his team sat. Their occupants were pretending to work, but he picked up all the looks that were shooting into the room from them. Some were angry, some concerned and some just looked disturbed by events. He should have noticed there was something odd about them when he arrived but he had been too preoccupied with balancing his bag, coffee, umbrella and coke to really look at them. Then Lily had distracted him. 

She was waiting patiently while he took in what he was seeing, but there was something in particular she wanted him to see and when she judged that he had had enough time to absorb the vile threats in front of him she pulled one piece of paper out of the pile and placed it on top of the one Jimmy was staring at. This one was slightly different in character. It was one that had been sent to a more senior member of the team. It had, Jimmy quickly glanced at the time stamps, been one of the last to be sent. It had a more measured appearance; it was addressed though not signed. There was no over use of capital letters and it was lengthier than the rest. 

Jimmy read through it with a growing sense of unease in his stomach. It stated that, following the refusal of Mr James Novak (Senior Editor for Radio advertising) to run their advertising campaign and in so doing hampering the work of these earthly messengers of heaven the organisation had no other choice but to conclude that those working for him, and indeed Mr Novak himself, were opposers of heaven. That being the case, the organisation felt it prudent to warn the employees of the dangers of such action and the possible ramifications for their immortal souls and also, if they considered themselves believers, to encourage them to take a stand against the actions of someone who was clearly not a believer and in so taking a stand begin to take steps towards their redemption.

By the time Jimmy reached the end of the email he could hardly breathe. He didn’t really know what to be outraged or disturbed by first. He couldn’t quite believe the scenario he was faced with. For one, he couldn’t believe that Mr Wilson had sent the rejection email in Jimmy’s name instead of his own. For two, he couldn’t believe that anyone would act so maliciously purely because they were denied an advertising space. For three, he was absolutely crushed by the suggestion that he was not a believer, not a man of faith. And worst of all, he was utterly besieged by the horrifying thought that he HAD been ignoring a sign from God. That he had missed an opportunity to spread God’s true word to the masses and that now the punishment was being heaped upon his team. For a few moments he was frozen as his mind struggled to process the wide range of emotions assaulting him at that moment.

Lily, watching her easy going bosses face darken gradually, put a hand to her mouth and for the first time in many years bit nervously on one perfectly manicured nail. She wished desperately that someone else had been tasked with talking to Jimmy, Mr Novak – she always called him Jimmy in her head, about it all. It wasn’t fair. She hadn’t even gotten any emails herself; it was nothing to do with her. Thump. She visibly jumped as Jimmy sprang into action. He gathered the emails with such violence that his hands on the desk made it shake. Without a word, he marched out of his office and straight into Mr Wilson’s. 

Mr Wilson was certainly shocked by Jimmy’s sudden enraged appearance in his office. It was commonly believed by those who knew him that Jimmy Novak did not in fact have a temper. He was one of the most easy going guys around, everyone said so. He was good natured and even tempered. Those who knew him well knew that Jimmy Novak HAD a temper. A temper that was no less potent for being difficult to rouse. They said that Jimmy Novak had a temper, which he lost maybe once every couple of years and when he lost it, you’d better run for cover. 

“Have you seen these?” Jimmy demanded, in a voice that was not unlike his own. In fact, it mostly sounded like he was asking whether someone had seen something that he’d recently misplaced. But there was something extra sitting beneath the calm, rational tone. He threw the papers down on Mr Wilson’s desk and they fell haphazardly, some of them slipping to the floor. Lily, who had followed Jimmy in, hurried to pick them up.   
Mr Wilson frowned and looked at them before letting out a low whistle. 

“Wow. We really pissed someone off this time!”

“We?” Jimmy asked, raising his eyebrows, “I don’t see your name cropping up in any of these.”

Mr Wilson had the decency to swallow a little nervously, “I thought it would sound better coming from someone within the department,” he said, not even pretending he didn’t know what Jimmy was implying. 

“It’s your job to deal with these kind of people! You’re the one who calls the shots. You’re the one who has the final word!” Jimmy spat the words out and they flew at Mr Wilson like tiny missiles. 

“Look Jimmy, I have a lot on my plate! Everything in TV is screwed up, we’re missing three whole contracts for the print section and those papers are running from next week. I just wanted to take the heat off a little bit.”

In the face of such a humanitarian appeal, Jimmy’s anger slackened slightly and he turned away from the desk to collect himself. Then something occurred to him. He turned back to face the desk.

“You wanted to take the heat off,” he repeated.

“Yeah!” said Mr Wilson eagerly, “You understand how it is.”

“Why would signing the email in my name take the heat off?” Jimmy asked, “It was just one email,” as Mr Wilson squirmed Jimmy followed his train of thought to its logical conclusion, “You knew something like this would happen!”

Lily’s jaw dropped, her eyes widened and darted out towards the cubicles. She almost wanted to call other people in to hear the outcome of a conversation that had gone from interesting to downright scandalous. However, she realised that she couldn’t do so without drawing attention to herself. So she simply slowed down the process of picking up the papers from the floor and listened with all her might so that she could give a full report to her friends in the break room.

Mr Wilson flinched, “Well…”

“Well….”

“I got a heads up from a guy I know over in Kansas. His company got approached by these guys a couple of weeks ago. He turned them down too, it didn’t go well. He said he wasn’t the first either,” he looked up at Jimmy appealingly, “I couldn’t take that storm breaking over my head. I just couldn’t.”

“So you wanted it to break on mine instead?” said Jimmy accusingly. 

Mr Wilson shrugged, his bravado returning now the confession had been made, “I’m sorry pal.”

“We have to call the police,” Jimmy insisted, “They can’t just send out threats like these.”  
Eager to appease his angry colleague, Jimmy did cause him the least problems out of   
all the departments after all, Mr Wilson nodded, “Of course!”

***************

The police were very helpful. They took notes, interviewed everyone who had received an email, took copies of everything and filed a very thorough report. It had to be done right; a young police officer had told Jimmy leaning in close confidentially when Jimmy had headed over to the police station after work to fill out some paperwork. It had to be done right, the police officer said, because the FBI were taking an interest in the case. Jimmy had raised his eyebrows at that, sure that the young man was simply trying to inflate his own importance. Sensing that Jimmy wasn’t totally on board with the story, the officer had pointed out two men who were talking to a more senior officer in the far corner of the stations dingy reception area. They, he said, were the two agents assigned to the case. Jimmy looked at them. They wore identical dark suits. One was very tall and broad with slightly shaggy brown hair; the other was smaller but still quite tall with short hair and a slightly rougher look. Neither of them looked like Jimmy had expected FBI agents to look. They didn’t look very…polished. When he’d mentioned something to that effect to the young police officer, he had nodded knowingly. They had to look normal, he said, so they could go undercover. Jimmy had thanked him and left, to avoid being drawn into further conversation. Just after he left, the two FBI agents followed suit, satisfied that this was not a case that required any further investigation on their part and thinking that anything that raised a little awareness of the dangers out there could be no bad thing. Jimmy of course, would not have agreed with that sentiment.


	3. Chapter Three

Chapter Three

Jimmy cursed the whole day liberally as he sat in the car, stuck in traffic, already more than an hour late home and soaked to the skin because the heavens had decided to open as he left the police station. Stupidly enough, he had managed to leave his umbrella in the office and his coat had offered minimal protection. He could almost hear Amelia’s voice telling him that he needed to buy something better to wear and felt even more miserable. Aside from dealing with the police, Jimmy had had to spend all day fielding curious enquiries from other departments and having long apologetic meetings with each and every affected member of staff. Several hadn’t thought his apologies were worth very much and had not troubled themselves to hide that fact. At those points, Jimmy had cursed Mr Wilson as liberally as he had cursed the day. The worst thing about it all was that the thing that had troubled Jimmy the most about the whole thing was still very much with him. He still couldn’t quieten the fear that perhaps the whole thing was legitimate and he was being punished for missing an opportunity to do God’s work. Perhaps he had been receiving signs from the Lord for a while and he was just too blind to interpret them. He looked out of the window of the car and thought that the rain was certainly close enough to biblical proportions to be a sign of something. Though he couldn’t for the life of him figure out what that was. 

He KNEW that it was wrong to send malicious and threatening emails to people. He didn’t for a moment think that that was an act of God. That was an act of man. However, the email that had named him directly…that was just measured enough that it could be a manifestation of God’s word. As that thought crossed his mind he mentally kicked himself for having the arrogance to think that God might take the time to speak directly to someone as insignificant as himself. And yet this had not just happened to him. Between showing off about the presence of the FBI the young police officer had told him that these cases had not just sprung up in Illinois and Kansas, they were spread through most of the 50 states. If Jimmy was just a piece in a much wider picture then the idea of God’s hand being directly behind events started to sound less absurd. Though of course, his hand would probably be more involved in what was happening with the editors at the New York Times than with what was happening with him.

Jimmy toyed ideally with his phone as the traffic crawled forward and the rain beat down ever harder. He had already called Amelia to let her know that he wouldn’t make dinner because he had to go to the police station. She had sounded genuinely upset when he’d described the nature of the threats, begging him to come home as soon as possible. But Jimmy’s mind was not at rest. He didn’t want to bring his troubled mind home to his family. He didn’t want Claire to look up at him with the facial expression she reserved for the rare moments of family crisis. Those times when Jimmy and Amelia argued, or when Amelia had been hospitalised with food poisoning, or in the days after Jimmy had wandered around in a zombie like state after the shock news of his father’s sudden death. He had the feeling that, given the worn expression that he had glimpsed on his face in the cars mirrors, she might just look at him like that. So, sure that they weren’t going to move again for a little while, he called Amelia again. 

“Jimmy?” There was worry in her voice, “Honey, what’s wrong? Has something else happened?”

“No, nothing’s happened, everything’s fine.”

“Why aren’t you home yet?” she demanded.

“The traffics terrible,” he explained, “Must be the weather.”

“Must be,” she echoed. 

“Listen, I thought I’d stop by the church on my way home.”

“The church?” Amelia sounded puzzled now.

“Yeah…I think…I think I just need a little bit of time. Before  
I come home. Clear my thoughts.”

“Alright,” said Amelia doubtfully, “But don’t stay too long! Claire wants to see you before she goes to bed and it’s almost 7…”

“I know! I won’t be long, ok?”

“Ok…” Amelia hung onto the phone a little longer, “I love you.”

“I love you too! I’ll see you soon, ok?”

“Ok!” this time the reply came with a little more finality, but  
Jimmy could sense a certain reluctance in the way she hung up. 

He understood her desire to have him home as urgently as possible. The incident at school that she had had to go in early to deal with had involved the suspicious and violent death of a pupil and their family. Given the circumstances of what he had experienced that day he was sure she would be restless until she had her own family safely together again. He felt a little selfish and guilty for not hurrying home to her as fast as possible, but he wouldn’t feel as though their family was safely back together until he had unloaded some of his spiritual worry. 

**********

The Novak family attended St Martin’s church. It was an old church. It had existed on that spot for well over a hundred years and the building itself had been standing almost as long though it had been extended and renovated extensively in that time. It was a little removed from everything, sitting just outside a cluster of suburban housing known as St Martin’s village that was right on the edge of Pontiac proper. Everything out that way was a little more dated and traditional. The houses were old, some as old as the church, they were large and quirky and some of Pontiac’s richest residents lived in the area. The church was much in the same tradition. It was primarily a large white washed wooden structure with a steeple style bell tower appearing from the centre of the slanting roof. This was the original building and the upper portion of the building remained mostly unchanged, promising the kind of height and space not always found in buildings of this type. The lower part of the building had long ago become obscured by extensions that spread out from the main building like spiders legs creating something of a rabbit warren of interconnected storage and meeting rooms interspersed with larger halls that played host to anything from the St Martin’s village amateur drama society to a weight loss support group. 

On that particular Friday evening as Jimmy parked his car in  
the parking lot he could see several of those small surrounding buildings were brightly lit and he could see people moving around in the rooms. The main church however was in darkness and silence. It was an oddly brooding presence within the hustle and bustle of its surroundings. Not for the first time, Jimmy was thankful that, having been a member of the church committee many times in the past, he was privileged enough to have his own key to the churches front door. Otherwise, at this time of night on a Friday, he would have had to enter via the community entrance and pass through all the activity happening on that side of the building. He checked the time. It was close to 7:15. The church proper wouldn’t be officially opened again until about 8 or 8:30 in preparation for the Friday evening prayer service at 9pm. He had plenty of time in which he could sit in the church and be relatively sure that he would not be disturbed. 

He hurried across the dark parking lot, flitting through the light patches created by the lit windows but passing quickly into the denser gloom around the churches main door. As he arrived there the rather pathetically weak porch light flickered into life giving him just enough light to find the lock in the door and get the key in before it gave out again. Jimmy stepped inside and quickly drew the door closed behind him. He wasn’t entirely sure why he was behaving so secretively, he was just clear that he really would prefer not to meet anyone. 

As he started to walk down the churches central aisle towards the altar he felt the familiar sense of calm and security that he always felt in church descend around him like a warm blanket. He felt more at peace already, despite the fact that the church was in almost total darkness with the only light coming from some soft blue security lighting that seemed to shine up from the floor along the walls and along the central aisle. The inside of the church was very much a mock-up of what an old English church would have looked like. There were two rows of pews made of a hard yet warm looking wood. A large stained glass window dominated the wall behind the altar which sat on a slightly raised platform that was accessed by three long low steps. It all gave a sense of tradition that Jimmy often felt was lacking in more modern churches. He chose a pew two or three rows from the front, sat down, bowed his head and prayed. 

Jimmy wasn’t entirely sure how long he prayed for. He repeated his common mantra of asking for a sign, of asking for clarity until it almost felt like he’d entered some kind of trance like state of peace from which he wasn’t particularly keen on waking. But wake he did. And for the strangest reason. In the dark, silent and empty church Jimmy heard a voice. Jimmy could have sworn that he heard a voice and that voice said:

“It was not his will.”

It interrupted a silence so total that Jimmy’s head jerked upright automatically and he looked around for the person who had snuck into the church without him noticing. There was no one. He screwed up his eyes and stared intently into every corner, willing his eyes to adjust to the gloom so that they could pick out whoever was in there with him. Still he saw no one. He stood up and walked down the aisle, back towards the door, peering left and right as he went. Still he saw no one. He walked back towards the altar, repeating the process. Still he saw no one. He climbed to the raised platform where the altar stood as though the elevation might help him see something that he’d missed. Still he saw no one. 

His heart was pounding in his chest as he stared around in confusion. The he laughed suddenly and passed a hand over his eyes. Clearly he was much more tired than he thought. The reason why he couldn’t see anyone was because there wasn’t anyone there. He must have started to fall asleep and dreamt the voice or imagined it or…  
The door that joined the main church onto the rabbit warren swung open and someone came in, talking over her shoulder to a person who was out of sight in the warm light that poured through the opening. Or he had just heard them talking in the hall way outside and his brain had filled in the gaps. He recognised the woman. Her name was Susan. She was only in her 40’s but she came across much older. Her husband had died when she was just a young woman, Jimmy had never heard the full story, but after that she seemed to have sunk into some kind of early retirement from life. She was involved in everything related to the church, everything. But Jimmy had the funny feeling there was nothing else in her life. 

She saw him standing at the altar and gave a small theatrical scream, pressing her hand to her heart as though he’d given her a heart attack.

“Oh my goodness, Jimmy!” She exclaimed, “What are you doing skulking around in here in the dark? I didn’t see you come in,” she gestured vaguely towards the community entrance, “Are you coming to Friday prayer?” she asked brightly. 

Jimmy forced a smile onto his face, “No Susan I don’t think I am. I just stopped in for a few moments.”

Susan nodded as though she understood, “it’s good to get away sometimes,” she said. Meaninglessly.

“It was nice seeing you, Susan,” he said politely, “I have to get home, Amelia has dinner waiting for me,” he explained, starting to walk down the aisle.

“Oh of course,” she replied, “Give Amelia my love! I’ll see you guys on Saturday!” she called after him as he retreated hastily towards his car and home.

************

Amelia greeted him with a concerned hug as soon as he walked in the door. It was quick, tight and intense. He knew that she didn’t want Claire to see the small moment of vulnerability between them and he could hear running down the stairs as Amelia released him in favour of rubbing his arm gently. 

“Daddy! You’re so late!” Claire exclaimed as she flung herself at him using the speed she’d gained from running down the stairs to launch herself with so much force she almost knocked him over.

“Woooaahhh, Claire. Getting a bit big to do that!” he said, hugging her close. 

“Why are you so late?” she demanded, voice muffled as her face was squashed up against his chest.

“I had some things to do at work and then I had to stop by the church.”

Claire stepped back and wrinkled her nose as though the idea of church on a Friday was particularly distasteful. She approached church on Sundays with joy and enthusiasm, but she was not as enthusiastic about it at any other time. 

“Come on Claire, let him go. Your Father needs to have some dinner. You must be starving!”

Claire decided that watching her Dad eating dinner wasn’t as exciting as whatever she was doing in her room and ran back up the stairs as quickly as she had run down them. 

“She makes me feel tired just watching her,” said Jimmy as he followed Amelia into the kitchen which was filled with all the normal warm and delicious smells. 

Amelia smiled, “I like to see her running around. Reminds that she’s strong and healthy and can do whatever she wants.”

Jimmy nodded in agreement, slumping down onto one of the stools by the kitchen island.

“Susan sends her best wishes,” he said after a pause. 

Amelia rolled her eyes. She found Susan tiring. Before she had met Jimmy her faith had been a much more private thing and she still sometimes found the intricacies of church politics a little wearing. Namely having to put up with women like Susan who were determined to get involved in every little detail of everyone’s lives. 

“That woman is insufferable,” she groaned, a little uncharitably. 

Jimmy tutted at her but didn’t disagree, “I’d expect a phone call asking you if you know that I’m out after dark sometime soon.”

Amelia laughed out loud at that before coming over to kiss him, “she probably thinks I’m worried she has designs on you.”

It was Jimmy’s turn to laugh at that. And at that point all the ills of the day had finally been smoothed away. He had prayed, there had been no sign from God and he was now confident that he had not brought the day’s events on himself. He was at home with his wife and daughter. It was warm and light. The rain was outside, he was inside and he was happy.

**************

Jimmy stayed up late that night. He sat in the TV room, in his comfortable arm chair, treating himself to a rare beer or two and enjoying a little peace and quiet. Amelia had gone up to bed earlier, exhausted by her early start and not impressed by Jimmy’s choice of viewing. Jimmy watched sport in all its incarnations; he wasn’t a fan of anything in particular he just watched anything with appropriate enthusiasm. He picked teams to support at random depending on who was playing and got as involved as if he’d supported that team for years. Amelia had always found that strange. Her chosen sport was basketball and she wasn’t much interested in watching anything else. So she’d left him to it. 

Jimmy’s enthusiasm had failed him slightly that evening and not too long after Amelia had left and gone to bed he had fallen soundly asleep. So he wasn’t aware of the subtle changes taking place around him. He wasn’t aware that the programme that was playing on the television was being interrupted by words that were not totally in keeping with its topic. Words like angel, heaven and God were starting to flash through with increasing speed. Jimmy slept on, oblivious to what was going on in front of him. Until an image attempted to flash through the screen. The TV couldn’t cope. The picture distorted and a sharp burst of static jerked Jimmy awake. He blinked, initially confused and then groaned in frustration when he saw the distorted screen. He reached for the remote to turn the TV off. He pressed the off button and nothing happened. He pressed it more firmly. Nothing. He pressed it again trying holding the remote at a different angle. Nothing.

He sighed and stood up, stretching as he did so, so that he could wander over to the TV and turn it off there. He pressed the button once, nothing happened. He pressed it again, nothing happened. He was baffled and frustrated. The static was getting louder and a high pitched sound was starting to dominate. It was hurting his ears and he was sure that it was going to wake Claire and Amelia so he went to reach behind the TV to turn off the power. He never got that far.

It was as though someone had suddenly turned the volume up to an extreme Jimmy had never felt before. It was like the high pitched noise was worming its way into his head. It was like it was getting in via his ears and his eyes and even his mouth forcing its way in. It brought with it a worse pain than he had ever experienced. It was as though while worming its way in it was making his head too full and pushing it, stretching it and straining it to the point where it might explode. He pressed his hands to his head. He wasn’t sure whether he was trying to keep the sound out or whether he was trying to hold his head together but it was all he could think of to do. He could feel that he was screaming in pain but he couldn’t hear it over the sound. His vision was darkening. He was starting to get the horrible feeling that he was going to die. That he was having some kind of a stroke. 

That was his last coherent thought before he felt himself collapse and the world dissolved into a strange sequence of flashing images. There was a lot of light and a strange sense of warmth. Between the bright white lights he was seeing flashes of wings and green hills and bright flowers and things he couldn’t name or even begin to describe. It was like his brain and his body had been hijacked and he couldn’t think and he couldn’t move.

Amelia had been woken, but not by the sound of static. What woke Amelia up was the very distinct thud of Jimmy collapsing to the floor. She wasn’t sure at first why she had woken up. She glanced over to Jimmy’s side of the bed and saw that he wasn’t there. She looked at the clock on the bed side table. It was just gone 2am and that worried her. It was very unlike Jimmy not to have come up to bed by this time. She got up cautiously and slipped out into the hall way. There were no lights on upstairs that she could she so she headed for the stairs, pausing to listen at Claire’s door to assure herself that she hadn’t woken up too. Satisfied that she wasn’t awake Amelia continued down the stairs.  
The TV room was right at the front of the house and there was no door separating it from the entrance hall. There had been a sliding door, but once Claire had started making her own viewing choices Jimmy had insisted it be removed. He wanted to know exactly what his daughter was watching and keeping the TV room open to the rest of the house had been a big part of that. As Amelia walked down the stairs she glanced into the TV room. The TV was off and Amelia was just about to look elsewhere when she spotted something. 

Jimmy was lying on the floor. He was on his side with his back to the doorway and all that ran through Amelia’s mind was that he wasn’t breathing. She ran down the stairs throwing herself down at his side. When she rolled him onto his back to get a better look at his face she saw something that made her blood run cold. Jimmy’s eyes were half open, but they were totally blank.


	4. Chapter Four

Chapter Four

Jimmy felt very guilty sitting in the hospital. He gathered that Amelia had had a very stressful night. She had come downstairs to find him unconscious on the floor after suffering what the doctors were describing as a seizure. She had to call an ambulance and while waiting for them: wake Claire, explain to her what was going on, arrange for her mother to come pick her up and then, once the ambulance had picked Jimmy up, wait with Claire for her mother to arrive before she could travel to the hospital to try and find out what was wrong with her husband. By the time Amelia had arrived at the hospital, Jimmy had already been put through a barrage of tests and had left the Doctors a little baffled.

Jimmy had been blissfully unaware of all that had happened. He hadn’t woken up until he’d been in hospital for several hours and all he had been able to contribute was a vague memory of static on the TV and an almighty headache. Which was not helpful to anyone. Now they were on a ward with Jimmy trying to convince a succession of doctors that he felt fine and would really like to go home. Amelia was curled up in a chair next to the bed slipping in and out of sleep. She had stayed fully awake just long enough to talk to Claire on the phone in the morning and to arrange things for her, then she had collapsed into the chair and fallen asleep. Jimmy felt very guilty for all the problems that he’d caused.

He really did feel fine. He had a headache, that was true, but aside from that he didn’t feel unwell at all. In fact, he almost felt better than he did before. He felt strangely at peace with himself. Tired, but peaceful. He couldn’t for the life of him explain why he felt that though. One Doctor, a neurologist had theorised that perhaps the seizure had been the result of the release of some kind of pressure and now that it was gone he felt better. It hadn’t been a particularly scientific hypothesis. 

By mid-afternoon Jimmy was officially done with the hospital and was on the brink of calling someone so that he could discharge himself. He was just about to do it, wanting more than anything to take Amelia home and let her sleep when one of the Doctors returned. He had introduced himself earlier as a neurological consultant and seemed to have been pulling many of the strings behind Jimmy’s treatment. His name was Dr Anori and he was a portly gentleman in his late 50’s with a professorial air. He swept into the room with a nurse and a medical student or two in his wake and regarding Jimmy as though he was a mildly interesting book or panting of some kind. 

His entrance was loud enough to wake Amelia but he did at least wait respectively while she gathered herself, pushing her hair off her face, standing up and brushing down her clothes. 

“Mr Novak, Mrs Novak,” he said, shaking both their hands, “Dr Anori, we met earlier. Well,” he glanced down at the file of notes he was holding, “On the positive side I can give you a clean bill of health. We haven’t been able to find any brain abnormalities, all your blood work is totally normal, everything checks out.”

“Well that’s good!” said Amelia brightly, reaching out to take Jimmy’s hand. 

“It certainly is. On the negative side, we don’t know what caused your seizure,” he paused, “We don’t even know if that’s what it even was.”

“What does that mean?” Amelia demanded.

“It means that we’re not going to do anything. We’re going to discharge you and we’re essentially going to wait and see if it happens again. Sometimes these things happen and we struggle to find a reason for it. A lot of times those things are one offs. Generally speaking, if it happens more than once we end up with more information and we can start to build up a picture of what could be going on. So my advice is go home, take it easy, if you start feeling unwell go and see your doctor and we’ll just see how it goes. Alright?”

“Alright,” said Jimmy, “thank you very much.”

Amelia looked less pleased, “So it could happen again?”

Dr Anori plastered his most reassuring look onto his face, “that is always a possibility. But as there’s nothing showing up on the tests I wouldn’t say it’s likely.”

“Amy,” Jimmy only called her that when he really wanted her to listen to him, “Amy I feel fine.”

She looked at him unhappily, “I was really worried.”

“I know. I’m sorry. But I feel fine now. I just want to get home and see Claire and forget it happened. I’m fine,” he repeated.

Amelia allowed herself to be persuaded, very reluctantly, that it was alright for Jimmy to go home. Yet she fussed to such an extent that she made it clear that it was with very bad grace. Jimmy felt very guilty about causing her so much stress but he also started to feel a little frustrated. Amelia did not like anything which damaged the illusion of total control that she liked to cultivate. It was rarely a problem in their relationship because Jimmy was so willing to let her have control. It was also partly because part of Amelia’s idea of control was having Jimmy in an authoritarian and controlling role. He sometimes felt that it was in that area that he let her down the most. Regardless, he just wished that she could relax and accept that there was now a small degree of uncertainty in their lives. There was nothing that could be done. Either it would happen again, or it wouldn’t. Jimmy was very ready to accept that but Amelia couldn’t. 

She insisted on driving them home and, at times, when Jimmy glanced over at her, he could see that her knuckles were white because she was gripping the steering wheel so tightly. He preferred not to look at her and instead stared out of the window. It was still raining. Great sheets of rain were forcing their way down from the heavens. It was as though a second flood was threatening. It was unsettling. Some of the calm and peace that Jimmy had felt in the initial aftermath of the episode was starting to wear away, being slowly consumed by the tension of the car and the oppressive weather.

It got even worse when they arrived home. Claire and Amelia’s mother were sitting side by side of the sofa waiting for them to get home. Claire was pale and biting her nails anxiously. There were dark circles under her eyes and it was clear that she hadn’t slept much that night. Amelia’s mother had her lips pursed disapprovingly and was surveying Jimmy as though he had planned to inconvenience her in this way. Francis was a loving and caring woman. She had been a wonderful mother to Amelia and Claire couldn’t ask for a more devoted Grandmother, but she had always viewed Jimmy with a certain degree of suspicion. Jimmy thought he knew why, but the reason had never been explicitly discussed and probably never would be. 

Claire didn’t run to him upon seeing him. She approached him carefully and hugged him tenderly.

“Are you ok now Daddy?” she asked, with heart breaking sincerity, as her eyes searched his face for any signs of the terrifying illness that had interrupted her night. 

“I’m fine sweetheart,” he said, stroking her hair and smiling reassuring, “there’s nothing wrong with me.”

“What did the doctors say?” Francis asked, with the hard edge to her voice that she always used when speaking to him.

“That it was a seizure,” Amelia replied, a little unsteadily. She crossed the room to sit next to her mother who took her hand sympathetically and squeezed it warmly and reassuringly. Amelia smiled at her before carrying on. “They couldn’t find anything that could have caused it. They couldn’t tell us any more than that unless it happened again so they could get more information,” her voice wobbled slightly again. Now that her mother was here much of her strength was draining away. Claire had started to chew her finger again and Jimmy could see tears gathering in her eyes as well.

“They said it probably wouldn’t happen again,” he said firmly, “I’m fine,” he repeated for what felt like the millionth time that day, “Thank you so much for today Francis, we really appreciate your help,” he said, changing the subject with decision.

Thankfully Francis took his lead and nodded graciously, “I’m always happy to have Claire at our place. No matter the circumstances.”

“Do you wanna stay for dinner I can make something…” he asked, out of politeness mainly, gesturing to the kitchen as he did so.

“No thank you, you all could do with some rest,” she said, leaning over to give Amelia a hug before standing up, “I’d best be getting off.” She hugged Claire, gathered her things and was gone. 

Neither Claire nor Amelia protested much when he insisted that they go to bed right then and there even though it was barely 4 in the afternoon. 

“Get a couple of hours of sleep, I’ll throw some dinner together and call you when its ready,” he said.

Claire barely stopped to hug her father again before trotting obediently up the stairs. Amelia hovered anxiously for a few moments, but it didn’t take too many repetitions that he was fine to shoo her upstairs. Halfway up the stairs she turned back to him as something occurred to her.

“Don’t forget to call your Father!” she said, “He’ll be wondering what’s happened to you that you haven’t called yet.” Then she too was gone. 

Jimmy had totally forgotten about the obligatory phone call home. It wasn’t insisted on by either Jimmy or his father, it was Amelia who was the driving force behind it. Her parents were a weekly feature in their lives. They lived only a short drive away from Pontiac in a more rural area and every Sunday after church the family would gather there for dinner. Amelia’s father, Thomas, was far less sceptical about his daughter’s husband than his wife was. The first time Amelia had brought Jimmy round to meet her parents, Thomas had promptly taken custody of him and enlisted his help in mending the fence around their chicken coop and in completing various other odd jobs. When Jimmy was discussed among the family later that evening, in response to Francis’s misgivings he had simply said that, “the man knows his way around a toolbox.” Apparently, this was the highest praise available from him and Francis had never again explicitly verbalised a criticism of Jimmy. Francis, Thomas and Amelia were a close knit family unit and hardly a day went by where they didn’t at least talk to each other. Amelia thought all families should be like that and did her best to cultivate a similar closeness between Jimmy and his father. 

Amelia had never understood Jimmy’s father. Gregory Novak was a gruff, hardened character. Life hadn’t been kind to Gregory. He had had a difficult youth and found solace in Jimmy’s mother, a nearly unbearably sweet woman who had stuck with him despite all his flaws and had worked tirelessly to better him. It had worked. They had had Jimmy and were happy. Sadly, Jimmy’s mother had died when he was still very small. It had taken Jimmy a very long time to figure out that his mother’s death had been a suicide and that it was that fact which had eaten away at his father endlessly for the last 30 years. It had resulted in Gregory taking a very limited interest in his son’s life and Jimmy had been raised by his grandparents. Consequently, there was very little for Jimmy to build a relationship with his father on. Amelia did not understand this. She thought that a fundamental bond must exist between father and son. So she insisted that Jimmy call his father every Saturday morning shortly after breakfast and force at least half an hour’s conversation with the man. 

Jimmy knew that those half hours were as painful for Gregory as they were for him. But Jimmy didn’t want to make Amelia any unhappier than she already was, so, reluctantly, Jimmy wandered into the kitchen, picked up the phone and called his father. 

“Yes,” Gregory snapped down the phone when he eventually answered, “What do you want?”

“Hey Dad, it’s me.”

Gregory grunted, “what you calling me at this time for?” he demanded.

“I couldn’t call earlier.”

“You can’t expect me to be waiting around all day for you to call,” he grumbled peevishly, “I wasted time this morning waiting for you to call when I could have been doing something else!”

“I couldn’t call because I was in hospital,” said Jimmy. He was surprised to hear that his father had waited for him to call. He would not have expected that. 

Gregory grunted again, “What idiotic thing did you do this time?” he asked, without a single trace of concern.

“I had a seizure. Well, I heard a weird noise and blacked out,” Jimmy replied.

Gregory did not reply. The silence stretched. 

“Dad?” Jimmy asked, thinking the line might have cut out. 

“I’m here,” Gregory’s voice had lost some of its forced gruffness and he spoke slowly, as though he were thinking deeply, “What kind of weird noise?”

Jimmy frowned, perplexed by his Dad’s reaction. He had been expecting some kind of dismissive speech about how he was a weakling and shouldn’t have made such a fuss or something along those lines. “I don’t know, it was just really loud.”

“Where did it come from?” the question flew out of the phone, sharp and insistent. 

“Erm…” Jimmy hadn’t really thought about it. 

“Damn it boy, where did it come from?”

“Dad what’s wrong?”

“Just answer the question!” Gregory snapped. 

The tone was so reminiscent of Jimmy’s childhood telling offs that he answered automatically, “Well I thought it came out of the TV. But that doesn’t make sense because the TV was broken. There was only static.”

“You heard a loud noise, you thought it came from the TV and then you blacked out,” Gregory repeated, “Anything else?”

“Well…I think there might have been a lot of light. Dad why are you asking me all this? Has this happened to you? Is there some kind of medical history in the family that I should be aware of?”

Gregory laughed bitterly, “Something like that. Ok son, you listen to me now because I’m only gonna tell you this once. If they start talking to you, don’t you listen. You hear me? Don’t you listen to one word.”

“If who…” there was no point in Jimmy finishing the question. Gregory had said what he wanted to and had hung up. 

Jimmy leaned against the kitchen work top and stared at the phone as though it might give him some kind of explanation for the bizarre exchange that had just taken place. It had been a very long time since Jimmy had heard his father so animated. Or so interested in his life. There were a lot of questions crowding into his mind. He tried to organise them. It seemed clear that Gregory had some kind of experience with the phenomena that Jimmy had experienced. Yet no matter how hard he tried, Jimmy could not think of any mention during his childhood of Gregory experience anything similar. He could remember no hospital visits, no conversations with his Grandparents about it and he had certainly never seen it happen. It was also clear that Gregory expected something else to happen as a result of the collapse. ‘If they start talking to you, don’t you listen.’ The statement made no sense to Jimmy. He couldn’t think who they might be. All he could think of was that Gregory expected him to start hearing voices or something like that, but why would he think that based on a blackout?

Suddenly, Jimmy remembered the moment in the church when he had been so sure that he had heard a voice but hadn’t been able to find a source for it. His heart beat a little faster. Had he really been hearing voices? Was that linked to the blackout? That didn’t seem to make much sense. He wasn’t sick, not in that way, he didn’t hear voices, he wasn’t crazy. 

But his mother had been. 

Really? Had she been? She had killed herself and sane people didn’t do that. Perhaps it wasn’t Gregory that had suffered blackouts, perhaps it had been his sweetly perfect wife Hannah. Perhaps she had heard voices and they had driven her to abandon her family so cruelly. Perhaps Gregory was worried that his son would follow a similar path.  
Jimmy balked at that. He felt suddenly very sick. He didn’t feel like he was losing his mind. He felt fine. It was just a blackout. He closed his eyes and prayed desperately that it was only a blackout. He prayed that it was not a sign of worse things to come. He prayed that if his mother had heard voices, if that had caused her suicide; the same affliction wouldn’t pass to him. He prayed for his health. He prayed for reassurance…

The pain exploded in his head so suddenly that he reeled forward and had to catch himself on the kitchen island or he would have fallen. It was the same pain he had felt the previous night, but this time the sound came after the pain. It sounded different, more varied, it fluctuated and had shape. Or perhaps he was only better able to notice it this time. He was still upright. He hadn’t fallen. The pain was blinding, flooding his vision with a white light. Jimmy blinked desperately to clear his vision. Images flashed before his eyes as they had the last time, but again they were clearer and Jimmy was definitely still upright and conscious. Not for much longer though he thought. He was starting to lose the feeling in his arms and legs again. His legs started to give way and he slumped towards the floor, still desperately clutching at the work top. 

As suddenly as it had come, the pain vanished, Jimmy’s vision darkened and slid onto the floor. He wasn’t unconscious for very long this time. He opened his eyes after a minute or two, inhaling deeply as though it was the first breath he had ever taken. He felt exhausted but again, he felt an odd sense of peace. One thought was very clear in his mind and that thought was that there was no need to tell Amelia what had happened and that there was certainly no need to contact the hospital to tell them about it.

Jimmy climbed gingerly to his feet as that thought replayed in his mind over and over again. It was as though he couldn’t think anything else. Almost as though someone was standing next to him, shouting it so loudly into his ear that that was all that he could focus on. But that wasn’t the case. It was just a very clear thought that was all. 

Almost on autopilot, Jimmy wandered to the fridge and started to pull out the ingredients for dinner. By the time dinner was ready and he was calling Claire and Amelia down to eat, he wasn’t really sure whether the second episode had even happened.


	5. Chapter Five

Chapter Five

Amelia didn’t want to go to church the following morning.

“They’ll all know what happened and I don’t think I can stand all of their over the top sympathy,” she grumbled, sitting on the bed with her knees pulled up to her chest. She looked very small and vulnerable. Her hair looked more blonde than brown in the morning sunshine and her skin was almost translucently pale. For an insane moment, Jimmy thought that it was Amelia that had been ill. That was how it looked.

“How would they know?” he said, buttoning his shirt with determination. 

“Lynette works at the hospital remember. I bumped into her in the hallway. I had to explain why we there. I didn’t say much but you know how nosy she is!” 

Jimmy didn’t comment but frowned slightly at such an uncharitable remark. After all, he did know how nosy Lynette was. She was a midwife and therefore she shouldn’t have anything to do with the neurology department. That wouldn’t have stopped her though. She would have gossiped her way to all the details of Jimmy’s attack and then, have spread that information to as many of their mutual acquaintances as possible. So Amelia was right. They would face a gauntlet of sympathetic inquiries. However, it was his health that would be enquired after, not Amelia’s. He thought about pointing this out, but then decided it would be better to answer more diplomatically.

“Look,” he said, wandering over to her and stroking her face, “After what happened I need to go to church.”

“You’ll tire yourself out!”

“Faith heals,” he said.

Amelia sighed, “Faith might heal but you don’t need to be in church to have faith.”

Jimmy glared at her. It was a solid theological argument but he wasn’t going to admit that. So he used the only argument that he knew would convince her, “You don’t have to come with me, but I’m going.”

She returned his glare with considerably more venom than he had put into his, “You can’t go alone. You can’t DRIVE. What if you black out behind the wheel?”

Jimmy didn’t argue. She was getting out of bed as she said it.   
Amelia bustled them to such an extent that they were in the church and sitting in their customary pew long before their normal time. Timothy, the church organist, hadn’t even started playing yet. He was still sipping his coffee and regaling an unsuspecting member of the congregation with his stories. He was in his 90s, a war veteran with a leg that often gave him trouble, but he was still sprightly and could talk the hind leg off a donkey without too much trouble. He raised a hand in greeting as the Novaks sat down. Jimmy waved back.

Jimmy quickly figured out that Amelia had rushed so much because she wanted to avoid running the gauntlet of the members of the congregation that traditionally loitered in the entrance way, gossiping with each other. However she had clearly underestimated the level of curiosity felt by some of the congregation’s members. Instead of milling through the crowd they now functioned almost like a display. People filtered past, pretending to have business at the front of the church, so that they could make sympathetic enquiries. They also probed and prodded, trying to get more details of what had actually happened. They were trying to analyse and assess whether there was anything more to the story, anything scandalous that could be discussed and pondered over. Jimmy did his level best to disappoint them, making the incident sound as dull and uninteresting as possible. He wasn’t so sure how successful he was. There was quite a crowd gathered by them when the service was due to start. It took Father Phillip much longer than usual to start the service, Timothy on the organ had to play some very striking chords to get people’s attention.

Jimmy enjoyed the service. Phillip was a strong speaker and he talked with conviction and intelligence about faith. Jimmy liked him because he wasn’t scared to talk about doubt. He admitted that sometimes, there was no concrete answer and the only answer was faith. It was accepting that fact that had finally reconciled Jimmy to his own faith so every sermon preached by Father Phillip felt like an affirmation of his own personal beliefs. Today he was talking about natural disasters and their place in the concept of a loving God. He was talking in response to a spate of unusual weather patterns in the area, storms and things that came out of nowhere causing senseless destruction. He cautioned them not to question God’s plan too closely and to try to remember that they could not see the bigger picture. Humans weren’t capable of seeing how each event fitted into the larger pattern of life. Jimmy certainly agreed with that.

While listening to the service, he couldn’t help thinking about his own situation. How did what was happening to him fit into the bigger picture? Was that something that he would ever know? Should it be something he even thought about? He might well believe with the idea of not examining God’s plan too closely but he felt like he was missing something important, something obvious, and he couldn’t stop himself thinking about it. He really couldn’t.

He offered up these thoughts when they turned to their prayers as the service drew to the close. Timothy was playing beautifully, pouring out soaring melodies that dragged your thoughts to the heavens whether you wanted to turn them that way or not. They swelled and roared, filling every inch of space in the church and daring you to think of anything other than the almighty. Daring you. Jimmy did not dare and he prayed, and he prayed, and he prayed and it seemed to him that a voice grew up on the music…or was it growing in his mind…he couldn’t tell. It was a voice that promised him answers. That told him that he would soon know the meaning behind all that happened. It promised him. 

The music waned, but the voice remained. Jimmy opened his eyes, trying his best not to betray the fact that where everyone else now probably heard nothing but Phillips voice drawing the service to a close and wishing them a safe week, he was hearing a booming voice that seemed full of meaning though it now seemed unintelligible without the support of the music. He sat up slowly. He could feel the pain that had been present during the previous two attacks, it was there but it was somehow separate. Something was holding it at bay, he didn’t know what. Or perhaps it just wasn’t hurting as much this time.   
Amelia touched his arm and Jimmy was suddenly aware that the service was over and people were getting up and moving around while he was sitting rigidly still with what he imagined was a highly vacant expression on his face. He forced himself to smile at her.

“Shall we go?” he said, hoping that his voice sounded a normal volume and that the cheerfulness didn’t sound too forced. She responded fairly normally so he was hopeful. In leaving, they had to pass through the gauntlet of the congregation members and Jimmy tried his very best to maintain his forced normality. It was a struggle as his entire being was occupied with monitoring the sound that was occupying his skull in such an all-consuming way. It wasn’t until they made it out to the car that he became aware that it was starting to die down. It was still there, but its intensity was ebbing away like the tide going out on the beach. 

By the time they made it home, he was sure that Amelia suspected that something was not right. Jimmy was profoundly aware of the fact that his answers were vaguer than they should have been. He was aware that there was a little unsteadiness in his body. He was aware that his hands were shaking and his attempt at holding them together was both unnatural and unconvincing. She didn’t say anything though. She was keeping a respectful difference. She was also to a certain extent taking refuge in offended silence, taking his repeated assertions that he was fine to their logical extreme and ignoring what she probably perceived as a non-critical sign that he was not ok. She would bring this up the next time there was more threatening evidence that he was not well.   
Jimmy couldn’t focus on that fact too much at that point. His body was slowly showing the strain of the experience and he didn’t know how long he could hold out. When they got home, Jimmy headed straight upstairs, went into the bathroom, locked the door and collapsed onto the floor. 

***********

In a strange way, over the next month or two, Jimmy got used to the attacks. They came with regularity and each time they were a little easier to handle. At first he wasn’t sure if he was just getting better at handling the pain, but he became more and more sure that the pain was actually decreasing. He accepted that what he was hearing was some kind of a voice. It became more and more human as time went on. The sounds were less all consuming, they didn’t fill his head in the same way. It was still very loud, louder than any sound he had ever heard before, but there was increasingly space in his mind for thoughts of his own at the same time as the voice. He conjectured that it was this space that was allowing him to start to interpret the sound far more coherently. 

There was a definite shape to the voice. Jimmy was starting to hear phrases and recognise that there were repeated phrases present during the attacks. He was fairly sure that he was hearing the same thing every time, perhaps with only minor alterations. He spent hours debating whether the voice was male or female, he leant towards male but he did have a sense that perhaps it was not really something that could be described in such human terms. 

Not to be described in human terms, but it often seemed to be tied to very human things. The sound sometimes seemed to use objects at conduits to reach him. It came through on radios and TV’s, often accompanied by bursts of static and even these moments of static didn’t seem to exist for anyone else. He thought that very odd because it seemed such a physical and solid thing he could understand why the things that happened in his mind weren’t perceived by anyone else but when the technology got involved, that confused him. 

It became, in many ways, far more of a problem for him that he was distracted by pondering the nature of the sound than by the experience of the sound. He experienced the sound for 10/15 minutes and then would think about it for the next hour or so. At work, he became far less social and productive in his breaks because, instead of chatting to his co-workers and finishing off odd jobs, he would now sit and stare into space and think about what he was hearing. At home, instead of watching TV in the evenings like he normally did he would sometimes simply sit and stare into space. Thinking. 

Amelia noticed and he told her vaguely that work was stressful at the moment and that he was preoccupied. After a while, she acted like she believed him. He thought that was probably because it was easier for her to convince herself that it was only stress at work than to dig down into deeper reasons. Particularly because he was determined to block her out and she knew that. She had asked him, tentatively, on one or two occasions whether he had had any more attacks and if that was anything to do with it. He had truthfully told her that what had happened before hadn’t happened again. That was true. It hadn’t happened in the same way. He didn’t need to go to hospital. He was fine. It wasn’t the same. 

He was aware that his behaviour was having an impact on his   
family. Claire seemed disturbed on two levels. She treated Jimmy awkwardly. She didn’t seek out his company anymore. He knew that he answered her more vaguely than before, treated her with slightly less attention. He knew that and he knew that she noticed. She also seemed to sense that there was tension between Jimmy and Amelia and she avoided spending time with both of them together even more than she avoided spending time with Jimmy. Jimmy didn’t want it to be this way. He wasn’t going out of his way to make things difficult, his mind just wasn’t totally connected to the world anymore. It was almost as though someone had reached inside him and pulled out all of his old feelings and replaced them with the voice.  
With the voice he couldn’t understand.

The only way he could think of working out that particular frustration was to chop the vegetables for dinner with far more aggression than strictly necessary. He had never shredded carrots so finely. It was a good thing that he was making stew or they would probably not be good for anything. He swept the carrots into the pot of boiling ware, pulled a leek towards him and started on that. He was chopping so fiercely he was starting to worry about the state of the chopping board. He picked it up and scrapped the leeks off with his knife. He examined the board for marks and could see that there were small dents in it that hadn’t been there before. 

The radio fizzed into life and he glanced at it. The static was so loud and nothing else was coming through that Jimmy’s curiosity was peaked. Normally the voice came through within seconds of the static taking over but he heard nothing. He walked over to the radio and bent down to listen to it. He could hear the similar shape of the voice behind the static. He frowned and, rather nonsensically, reached for the volume control as though he could turn the voice up in the normal way. Nothing happened and he felt suddenly stupid. He checked that the radio was definitely turned off to make sure that this was part of one of the episodes rather than just the radio playing up. It was off, so he shrugged and went back to his chopping. 

“Hello Jimmy.”

For a very strange moment Jimmy thought that it was just Amelia coming in and his lips moved to answer her…then he realised that he hadn’t heard anyone come in. He spun around, scanning the room to see who had spoken. But he sort of knew that he wouldn’t see anyone. He quickly established that the room was empty. He felt surprisingly calm. 

“Hello…” he said tentatively, feeling stupid to be speaking to an empty room and what could possibly be a voice in his head.

“Hello Jimmy,” the voice repeated. If Jimmy didn’t know better he thought that there was a tinge of relief to the voice, “Jimmy. I am an Angel of the Lord and I have work for you.”


	6. Chapter Six

Chapter Six

Jimmy was not ashamed to admit that when he had heard the voice of an angel coming from his radio he, to put it mildly, freaked out. He jumped back from the radio with such violence that he impacted the central island unit with such force that it took his legs out from under him and he almost fell to the floor, the only thing that saved him was grabbing at the work top to support himself. In the confusion of the moment, he forgot that he had set the knife he had been using to chop the vegetables down on the counter behind him before stepping over to the radio. In the heat of the moment, he had also foolishly placed it down with the blade tipping up. He grabbed at the counter and felt the sharp kitchen knife bite into his hand. 

He was quite glad of the pain. The shock of it reconnected him very firmly with the real world. His senses, which had all been focused on the radio and the voice before, were now fixed firmly on his hand. It was like his mind had been jolted from the heavens to the earth in one swift motion. He stood shakily, looking down at the deep gash which had appeared in the palm of his hand. Beads of blood rolled slowly down the length of it before forming into droplets and dripping from his hand onto the floor. He felt every part of the cut. The pain throbbed up and down it, radiating out in pulses so that his whole hand fell within its scope. By the time he glanced over to the radio again, it had fallen silent. 

He heard someone on the stairs, either Claire or Amelia was coming down them. Jimmy didn’t want either of them to come in to find him standing in the kitchen with a small pool of blood forming in front of him on the floor. He headed to the sink, holding his uninjured hand under the injured one in an attempt to stop himself from dripping blood all over the kitchen. He grabbed the dish cloth, prayed that it was relatively clean, and wrapped his hand in it hurriedly. He would have to go to the hospital, he was well aware of that, but he was dreading revealing that fact to Amelia. He debated whether or not he could sneak out, get his hand stitched up and make it back without anyone noticing he was gone. Considering that he was supposed to be making dinner, it probably wasn’t a possibility. 

Right on cue, coinciding perfectly with his resigned realisation that there was no way he was going to hide this, Amelia walked into the kitchen.

“Hey Jimmy I’m getting really hungry, how long till…” she trailed off as she caught sight of the small puddle of blood on the floor. She looked up at him, horror obvious in her face as she took in the rapidly reddening tea cloth around his hand, “What happened?” she demanded, rushing over and grabbing his hand and staring at it as though she could see through the dish cloth and decipher the situation that way.

“I slipped. The knife was lying on the side,” he gestured vaguely to where it still lay, “It was really stupid.”

She peeled back the dish cloth and winced when she saw what lay beneath it, “that’s so deep. You’re going to need stitches. How hard did you fall?”

“Pretty hard,” he smiled sheepishly, or tried to anyway, “dinners nearly done though,” he said, rather lamely.

Amelia didn’t justify that with a response, quite rightly so. She tried to persuade him to let her drive him to the hospital, but he argued against that. He didn’t think it was right to unsettle her with another dash to the hospital that would leave her alone at home unsure of what was happening and worrying about worst case scenarios. No. He didn’t think that was appropriate. Amelia argued that he couldn’t drive one handed, a little weakly, and then let him go on his way by himself. 

As he climbed into the car, he felt a small stab of regret. A few months ago this scenario would have played out very differently. There wouldn’t have been the remotest possibility of Amelia letting him drive himself to the hospital alone after an injury. She would have flapped and fussed while utterly deaf to his protests that he was fine. In fact, she would have been present when the injury occurred as they would have been in the kitchen cooking together, perhaps having a glass of wine together and talking through the day’s events. Now he was sitting in the car by himself and Amelia hadn’t even walked to the door with him, she had hovered uncertainly in the kitchen door as he’d left and told him to drive safely. There wasn’t concern in her voice as she said it, there was sadness. She felt their widening separation as well. Perhaps she felt it more keenly, perhaps she felt it less, he couldn’t tell. 

**********

As Jimmy started his drive home, he realised that he hadn’t really thought about what had happened properly. The pain of his hand, the pain of the interaction with Amelia, the practicality of going to the hospital and getting his hand stitched up had all consumed his mind to such an extent that he hadn’t really given himself time to think about the voice at all. 

A voice had spoken to him. A voice claiming to be an Angel of the Lord had spoken to him from his radio. It had addressed him by name and told him that he had work for him. As the enormity of those facts washed over him Jimmy felt temporarily paralysed, his vision blurred slightly and his control of the car became doubtful. The moment passed and he burst out laughing. He was shaking, he felt like he was losing control of himself, but he was laughing. He ran his newly bandaged hand over his face to try and still the laughter but he couldn’t. He couldn’t tell if he was happy or sad; or whether it was hysterical laughter bred from despair or laughter of pure joy. 

In some ways, this was a dream come true. He had always wanted a concrete signal from the lord that his faith was justified. He had always had a longing to be shown his place in the grand plan and to find that it was a significant place and that he meant something and was worth something in God’s grand scheme. When he was honest with himself that was all that he had ever wanted and if an Angel really was talking to him then that was wonderful and he was willing to do all that the Lord commanded. He had faith. And he wished that was where it could end.  
But it couldn’t. Jimmy always had doubt. It was that doubt which had made him fall back and cut his hand, it was that doubt which had paralysed him with fear and driven him to hysterical laughter. There was the burning question there, was he just crazy? Jimmy was not so archaic as to think that mental illness did not exist. He knew that there were people in the world who were unfortunate enough to suffer from invisible afflictions that inhabited their minds and tormented them there. He knew that it was not a rare thing that he would never experience in his life, it would affect his life in some way someday be it through family, friends or through his own suffering. He knew that. What if it had come to him now? He was well aware that his desire to be special and to be a significant part of the grand plan was overly aspirational and borderline delusional to start with. It wasn’t realistic, so for it to happen wasn’t realistic, so he had to entertain the idea that it was just something his mind had concocted as the product of some illness.  
Were angels even real?

Prayer was the act of attempting to contact God. It had never been quite clear to Jimmy where angels figured in the heavenly communication network. They were the messengers of God, carrying messages to mankind, that much was clear. But did the connection run both ways? He’d wondered about it before, who exactly was listening to the heart felt appeals he sent into the heavens? How was everyone listened to at once, he’d thought to himself, the angels had to have a role. So perhaps, if he prayed, the angel that had contacted him would hear. Maybe he had a direct link. He was sure that his message would get through to the relevant party…somehow. 

On impulse, Jimmy pulled the car over on the side of the road. No time like the present. He was a great believer in prayer, and he constantly reminded himself of the teaching that said that it was something that needed to live outside of the church. It needed to exist even at the side of the road. 

He bowed his head and prayed, muttering the words out loud, just in case angels required a little more help to be able to hear prayers than God did. 

“Heavenly father,” he began, with slightly more formality than he would normally use, “Messenger…” he added, uncertainly, as he wasn’t really sure who he was addressing his appeal to or even if it was possible to direct a prayer to more than one person, “You spoke to me, or your messenger did, and…I think I cut the conversation short before it was meant to end. I think that, you’ve been trying to get in touch with me for a while,” he was not pleased with the clumsiness of his words but he was so outside of his comfort zone the words just wouldn’t come, “and I don’t think it’s worked so well. I don’t know if that’s because of me or because of something else but today I think it worked. I don’t want you to think that my reaction meant that I’m not ready to listen. I am here, I want to listen and I want to know what your purpose for me is. So please. Speak to me. Tell me what you want me to do. Amen.”

He paused. Normally, after praying, he felt relieved and as though his problems had been taken from him and had been given to someone else to take care of. He had never expected a response, not really, that wasn’t how it worked. He had wished but he hadn’t expected. Now there was expectation. Now he had been tantalised by the hint that there was the potential of response once he finished his prayer there was a great rush of expectation. He felt tense. He was listening with all his might for something to happen. Every fibre of his being was drenched in anticipation. 

Typically, there was no response. 

He was disappointed. There was no disguising that fact, he was. He wallowed in that feeling for a little while and then he shook himself, started the engine and drove off. He told himself off seriously for committing the sin of pride. Who was he to expect that heaven would operate on his schedule? This was not like a phone call to a company. This was God that he was trying to contact and there was no way that heaven was going to be concerned with getting back to him in a timely manner. He was not that important if he was important at all. He also forced himself to look on the bright side in another way. If the voice had only been the product of some illness, a hallucination, then surely, it would have responded when he asked it to. He took heart from the fact that it hadn’t. His faith grew. 

***********

Amelia treated him quite coldly on his return. She enquired after the doctor’s response, tutted sympathetically over his hand and served him up some warmed up food left over from the dinner she and Claire and shared alone. She did all the things that a wife should do really, but she did it with a certain level of distance and once those offices were performed she had retreated to the lounge to watch TV. He’d looked in and seen that she’d wrapped herself in a blanket in what looked like an awfully defensive posture.

He went to bed without trying to talk to her. 

He had a strange dream that night. He was sitting on a bench, in a green park in front of a lake or river. He couldn’t tell which it was. The world was very bright. It was filled with a light that was warm and comforting but almost too much so. It was painful. His eyes watered, his head ached in a very familiar way and he felt a sense of nostalgia so extreme that he wanted to cry. It was simultaneously the most pleasant and the most unpleasant experience he had ever experienced in his life. It was also the most realistic dream he had ever experienced. He knew that he was not awake. He knew that he was asleep. But at the same time it felt like what he was experiencing was real, far more real than any dream had ever been. All dreams were real, they were real pictures in your mind and that was real enough in a lot of ways but this felt real in a physical sense as well as a psychological way.

He was sitting on the bench and he was staring out into the distance across the water. He couldn’t look away. At first he was alone. He was just sitting there, caught up in the rough and tumble of the extreme sensations that were battering his body. It lasted for what felt like a very very long time. Then something changed. He suddenly knew that he wasn’t alone anymore. The light became even more intense and he felt that he couldn’t bear it for a moment longer. He knew there was someone else there, sitting on the bench next to him he thought, but he couldn’t turn his head to look. He could just feel the presence there. That felt like a pretty terrifying concept to be honest, but it wasn’t scary. He couldn’t see who was there and he knew that was intentional, but that didn’t worry him. He didn’t feel threatened by the presence next to him. It felt familiar. 

“Jimmy,” his suspicions were confirmed as the presence next to him started speaking, it was the person who had been speaking to him, the thing who had claimed to be an angel, “My name is Castiel. I am an Angel of the Lord. You are right; I have been trying to speak to you for some time. The ability to commune with angels runs in certain blood lines, but it can take time to acclimatise a person to the true voice and presence of an angel.” 

Now that he could hear it clearly, Jimmy thought that the angel’s – Castiel’s – voice was very matter of fact. It was clipped, precise, and efficient. Jimmy didn’t really know how to respond, so he didn’t say anything.

“The success of earlier today persuaded me to attempt to contact you in this way,” the voice brightened slightly, as though Castiel was pleased, “It appeared to me that you were ready for more direct communication to take place between us. I was right. You have come a long way Jimmy Novak.”

“What do you want from me?” Jimmy asked. Then he had the distinct impression that a very intense stare was being focused on him. 

“I want you to show me your faith,” Castiel said simply, “there is work to be done and it can only be done by a pure man of faith.”

“I am a man of faith,” Jimmy said, with slightly more certainty than he felt. 

“You must prove it. There are tests on the path to the true service of God. I must test your faith.”

“I’ll do anything you ask me to! I’ll take any test you want. I’ll…” he trailed off as he knew that Castiel was gone. The bright light grew and the park and the lake faded away and he spent the rest of the night dreaming the normal confused dreams. 

**********

In the morning, the memory of the dream was there. It was more vivid than most memories and as Jimmy went about his morning routine it did not fade away as dreams often did. He wanted to take it as definitive proof that an angel really was trying to contact him. That was what he wanted most in the world but the doubts were still there. In the context of the conversation he had had last night that was not a good thing. If he was meant to be proving his faith then having doubts about the situation this early on was not a good way to start. He must have faith. That was the key to the whole situation. He must believe and have faith and he must follow the instructions no matter what they were and he must prove his faith. He did not want to let this opportunity pass him by. He wanted to serve the lord, he did not want to be a disappointment. 

He made the resolution with certainty on his drive to work. For some reason, he said it out loud to himself.

“I will have faith. I will prove my faith and I will serve the Lord,” he said. Speaking firmly to himself. 

“Good,” this time, Jimmy hardly reacted as the familiar voice sounded out. It sounded as though it was coming from nearby, as though someone was sitting next to him and speaking. It was not a voice in his head; it was a voice from some outside invisible presence, “All you need is faith. I will return to you in good time to set you the tasks that you must complete. You must be ready. You must turn your attention to this above all things. This is the most important thing. Nothing else matters more than this. Do you understand?”

There was only one answer to such an insistent appeal, “I understand.”


	7. Chapter Seven

Chapter Seven

Religion had always played a role in Jimmy’s life and the life of his family in one way or another. However, to say that it was a simple involvement would be the understatement of the century. His maternal grandparents had been exceptionally devout. They were Catholics and had lived their lives strictly according to the catholic churches teaching. This lead to a life of severe austerity. They had raised their daughter, Annette, Jimmy’s mother with unwavering strictness. It was a loving strictness that intended to prepare her to live a holy life and guarantee her a place in heaven. That had been their mantra. They had both died when Jimmy was very small but he could still remember their stern lectures of good behaviour and how crucial it was to his eternal life. They had meant well. They had meant well, but having thought about it, Jimmy was sure that the coldness with which they had sometimes treated their daughter had contributed to the fragility which had ultimately lead her to take her own life.

Annette had carried a deep personal faith into her adult life. It was one that was based on kindness and tolerance and self-sacrifice for the benefit of all those around her. In her short time with her son she had worked hard to instil a sense of faith into him, taking him to church regularly and filling their lives with religious teaching. 

Gregory and his parents were cut from a different cloth entirely. Jimmy’s grandmother, Evie, had had a cursory interest in religion. Her religion was mostly driven by the desire to be a part of the local community and she attended church more to be able to gossip than anything else. Her life and language was still heavily influenced by religion in an institutional kind of way and she lived her life according to a more traditional and ecclesiastical code than many. Her husband, Frank, on the other hand was deeply cynical about the church, he railed against it at every opportunity and held himself vigorously separate from his wife’s religious activities. He scoffed and grumbled at her superficial preaching’s but, recognising them as superficial, tolerated them.   
Gregory had followed very much in his father’s footsteps when it came to religion. As a child and young man he had been involved with his mother’s church, had been fairly dedicated actually, but his attitude had changed suddenly in his late teens. After that he had taken after his father. Like with his parents, religion had been the one sticking point between himself and his wife and he had tolerated her faith rather than supported it. His bitterness towards the church had increased after his wife’s death and religion had become the primary area of contention between Gregory and his mother, particularly in regards to how she was utilising it in Jimmy’s education. 

Evie prided herself on raising Jimmy in good Christian fashion. She always said that she thought that was what his mother would have wanted. Jimmy, understandably, had rebelled against the strict rules he was subject to. It hadn’t made sense to him. He had always been asking why the rules were what they were and how people knew that was what they were meant to be. He wanted proof and he wanted reasons and he was never quite satisfied with the answers he got. So he had abandoned religion in his early teens, dismissing it as nonsense. 

It had pulled him back in though. He had always felt a draw to churches, not to what was preached in them but to the buildings themselves and the images in them. He had always wanted to travel to Europe, just so he could see the greatest churches ever built, see the paintings and the stained glass with his own eyes. He’d never had the money but he had dreamed and he had spent many hours looking at pictures of them and spending time in the more modern churches around him. As an older teenager, trying to find his place in the world, making big decisions about his future, what he was going to major in in college and those kinds of things he had spent time talking to the people in the churches as well. He’d had long conversations with priests about the big personal questions of his life as well as the big questions of his life in general. All the different churchmen and women he had spoken to had had slightly different answers to all the questions and from that he had eventually found that he did believe in the fundamentals. He believed in God and his word, he believed in the basic principles of his teachings and all the virtues it promoted and since then he had constantly battled against his scepticism. He had clung to faith like a drowning man. 

So when a direct appeal had been made to his faith, he found it exceptionally difficult to reject it. 

“If they start talking to you, don’t you listen. You hear me?”

His father’s words rang in his ears. It now seemed obvious to him that his father had also been addressed by angels in his life. How else would he have known the signs? He was sure now that it was his father’s experience with angels which had caused him to break away from religion. It made sense. Perhaps his father had failed the tests of faith placed in front of him and as a result had experienced some punishment. Or perhaps in failing to prove his faith what faith he had had been irreparably shaken. Or perhaps…

Jimmy didn’t want to entertain the thought but there was the obvious alternative interpretation which suggested that he was not hearing the voice of an angel, he was hearing the voice of the devil or some other evil force and this was a temptation that would only lead him to evil things. His father’s life was hardly an encouraging model for a life touched by angels. He was a miserable old man with little to no connection to other people and he spent his life in isolation stewing in his own juices. That was not a path that Jimmy wanted to follow. But, it was starting already. His connection to his wife and daughter was already weakening. That was not a part of the test of faith. Jimmy was not going to let that happen. 

********

Jimmy’s master plan was very basic. He was going to recreate the kind of family time that they had treasured before all of this began. They would spend the day out and about somewhere walking, just enjoying the landscape and each other’s company. Then they would return home where Jimmy would cook a meal, they would eat together and they would spend the evening watching a film or playing a game together. As a family. No interference from outside sources. 

It all went well to start with. Claire and Amelia were a little frosty with him at first but they warmed to him as he showed no signs of odd behaviour. He was careful to be as carefree as he possibly could be. He chased Claire with threats of tickling her and after her initial pseudo teenage sophistication cracked and peeled away she screamed and laughed and played along. He threw his arm around Amelia’s shoulders and kissed her gently on the temple like he always used to. She suffered through it at first but over time her smile came back, she started to laugh and by the time they were getting back in the car at the end of the day she was squeezing his hand and smiling as she always had done before. 

The inevitable hiccup came when Jimmy was rummaging in the cupboards for the ingredients he needed for that evenings meal. They always had rice because it was something that Jimmy was fond of cooking but on this occasion there was no rice to be seen. 

Sighing he went through to the sitting room where Amelia was helping Claire with some piece of homework or other.

“Amelia,” he said, “Do we have any rice anywhere? There’s none in the cupboard.”

Amelia frowned as she considered the problem “If there’s none there I wouldn’t have put it anywhere else. I can’t remember buying any recently you haven’t…” she broke off.

The unspoken fact that the main reason there was no rice was probably that they were no longer sharing responsibility for the housekeeping s they had been before. She was about to say that he hadn’t spoken to her about what he was going to cook in a while and as a result she hadn’t adjusted the shopping lists accordingly. Jimmy was grateful that she didn’t say anything as he was in the process of trying to fix things. 

After a slightly awkward pause, she smiled, “there are a few bits and pieces I   
could do with buying anyway,” she said. “Why don’t I go to the store now and I can bring you some back? It’s not late, they’ll still be open.”

“Yeah, I’d really appreciate it.”

“Ok,” she smiled at him again, settled Claire with a few points to work on while she was gone and prepared to head out.

Jimmy returned to the kitchen elated by the fact that the offer to help him out by going to the store was much more in keeping with the old dynamic of their relationship than the new, unpleasant dynamic. As he busied himself putting together the rest of the ingredients he dared to hum to himself happily. The warm smell of sizzling onions filled the kitchen. The buzz of the television filtered through from the sitting room. Jimmy smiled to himself as he realised that Claire had promptly abandoned her homework on her mother’s departure but he couldn’t bring himself to tell her off. He was in the process of congratulating himself on a job well done when everything changed. 

Really, he should have known that tests would come when they would be most difficult to complete. That’s the whole purpose of a test right? To put you into extreme situations where you can only pass if you really truly know your purpose. 

So Jimmy should really have been expecting the cool, calm voice that burst into his mind at that moment.

“Are you ready to prove your faith?” the voice asked. Again, it wasn’t in his mind exactly, it was coming very distinctly from outside of himself but he couldn’t pin point it. It was just coming from all around him really. 

Slowly, calmly, Jimmy put down what he was holding. He put the knife that lay by the chopping board back in the drawer. He turned the heat down on the hob so that the contents of the pan wouldn’t burn. He had learnt something from his interactions of the voice and he wasn’t going to risk any more injuries. Not after the progress that he had made with his family that day. It was only when he had minimised the chance of injury that he made his reply.

“I’m ready,” he said. He didn’t really know why he spoke out loud. He was sure that a thought would have done the job just as well. But it felt right to speak somehow. More ceremonial. More proper.

On the hob, next to the frying pan, Jimmy had already set out a pot of water ready for the rice. In an instant and with no heat from the hob the water started to boil violently. What he had to do was instantly clear to him. There was no word spoken, nothing concrete was communicated, but Jimmy knew what he had to do. When Jimmy had envisaged tests of faith he hadn’t really seen burning all the skin off his hand as a possibility. So even though he knew what was required, he didn’t move instantly to do it. 

“A man of faith will be protected,” the voice said. 

Jimmy still hesitated. All the doubts that had filled his mind previously came crowding back in. If this was some kind of evil force tempting him then more than likely it would simply let him burn his hand and then chastise him for lack of faith. If that happened then he thought that would probably be a step too far for Amelia. 

“Are you a man of faith?” there was nothing accusatory in the tone of the enquiry. It seemed a genuine question. Was he or wasn’t he a man of faith? Did he believe in this forces ability to protect him from the boiling water? Well, Jimmy reasoned, the force had caused the water to boil so it would stand to reason that it could control the power of the water over him as well. Perhaps it was just bubbling, not boiling. He stretched his hand out over the pan. He could feel the heat coming off the water. There was the definite promise of pain there. He withdrew his hand. Perhaps the protection would only come when he fulfilled the test fully. 

Jimmy was a man of faith. That had been part of his identity for so long that he couldn’t shy away from it now. Taking a deep breath he plunged his hand into the water. 

And? And nothing happened. It was a bizarre sensation. It wasn’t unlike putting your hand into a lukewarm Jacuzzi. The water wasn’t cold, there was still heat there, it just didn’t hurt. The water bubbled against his hand. For a moment, a half remembered fact burst into his mind that extreme heat could burn off the nerve endings and so you wouldn’t feel any pain as your flesh burnt off. He lifted his hand out and was amazed to see that it looked just as it had when he’d put it in. The skin wasn’t even a little bit red. He touched it with his other hand and it felt perfectly normal. Just wet. 

He dipped his hand back into the water. Nothing. Took it out. Put it back in. Nothing. No burn, no pain. Nothing. His faith did indeed seem to be protecting him. 

Jimmy felt vindicated. For a grandiose moment he could see himself striding out into the world and showing everyone who had ever doubted God or mocked others for their devotion that they were wrong. That there was a higher power and that power did care for his people. He saw himself, just for a moment, as a sort of messenger to the masses. A prophet. Someone who would show everyone that they needed to show the faithful some respect. It was only for a moment though. Then Jimmy remembered who he was. He was a simple man. Communicating with angels or not he wasn’t anyone special. He was just another man and he couldn’t allow himself to be guilty of the sin of pride. But he was happy. 

Again, he should have known that there was more to the test than just seeing if he could bring himself to overcome his fear of pain. That would have been a very simple sacrifice were it to fail. He could have made up a story to cover the cause of injury. It would have seriously damaged the progress made that day but he would have lived to fight for his family another day. The fates had more thorough sacrifice in mind for that day.

As Jimmy stood with his hand in the pot of boiling water, feeling very contented and self-satisfied, Amelia came in. More time must have passed than Jimmy had thought and she was already back, carrying a bag of groceries under one arm with a smile on her face just about to say something. That smile froze on her face when she saw what Jimmy was doing. 

“Jimmy!” she exclaimed, before adding a little warily, “What are you doing?”

“It’s alright Amelia,” he said, “look.” He withdrew his hand from the water. “See.” He walked over to her and showed her, trying to look reassuring, “I’m fine.”

“Why would you do that?” she gasped, alarm and fear dancing in her eyes. 

“He told me to do it. It’s a test of faith. He protected me. Look.”

She refused to look at his arm, she just kept staring into his eyes, “Who told you to do it?” she asked. He was alarmed to note that her voice was a little shaky.

Jimmy looked awkwardly at his hand. For a moment, he didn’t have an answer. He didn’t really know who had told him. He wasn’t sure that saying that it was an angel would do him any favours. Then it came to him and he knew the answer. 

“Castiel.”

“Castiel. Who is Castiel?” Amelia asked warily.

“He’s an angel,” said Jimmy, “A messenger of the lord.”

Amelia swallowed hard. She took a step back from Jimmy as though she was scared of what he might do. 

“You’re sick Jimmy,” she said slowly. There was a patronising note in her voice. It was the kind of voice you used when you spoke to small children or the elderly. “You’re really…sick.”

“I’m not sick, I’m fine,” he said, reaching for her, intending to wrap his arms around her reassuringly.

She stepped back much more obviously this time and held her hands up in a gesture that very clearly told him to keep his distance, “No Jimmy. I’ve been trying to ignore it but I can’t any more. You’re sick. You need help.”

“God is speaking to me. He has sent his messenger to test me because he has marked me to do his work. This is a miracle, not a sickness, and we should be embracing it.”

Amelia was still shaking her head, “No Jimmy. No Jimmy,” she said, tears in her voice, “No. Do you have any idea what you sound like? You sound crazy. God has not picked you out. There is nothing special about you. You work for a radio station…”

“I…”

“No,” the tears were evaporating and she was starting to sound angry, “You need help. You need to think of your family and you need to fix this. I’ll make you an appointment to see a doctor. Tomorrow.”

“I…”

She stopped him by raising her hand, “Please Jimmy. You need to do this. For me and for Claire.”

All of Jimmy’s joy had evaporated and now his stomach had tied itself in knots. His mind wandered to the story of Peter. If he agreed that he needed help and went to see a doctor, was that the same as denying Christ? He wasn’t sure that it was. He was sure that it wasn’t exactly the behaviour of the faithful though. He should stand firm. He should make her see that this was a blessing to their family and that they should embrace it. He would…

He looked at Amelia’s face. Her eyes were damp with tears that were threatening to fall any moment. They were looking at him pleadingly though her mouth was set in a stubborn, angry line. He loved her. She had stood by him through so much already. He would show her that this was a blessing later. For now it was more important to him to reassure her. If part of that reassurance was speaking to a doctor…well…he hadn’t denied what he’d seen or heard yet. There was nothing wrong with speaking to a doctor. Not really.

So he nodded, “Ok. Ok I’ll see a doctor.”

She nodded thankfully, “Good. Good.” Hesitantly, she reached out and touched his arm.

He returned her watery smile with one of his own. The silence in his mind was deafening.


	8. Chapter Eight

Chapter Eight

Amelia made him an appointment with one of the best psychiatrists in the city. Jimmy winced slightly at the expense of it. Particularly when it was a pointless exercise and there was nothing wrong with him. He was slightly concerned by what the psychiatrist would say. While the knowledge that he was in contact with an angel was comforting and somehow took the edge of all the worries that crowded his mind, Jimmy wasn’t beyond the knowledge that a conversation in which he told a mental health professional that he was talking to angels wasn’t going to be the easiest. 

In the two days between the incident in the kitchen and the appointment Castiel had not been silent. He had not spoken with Jimmy directly but he had been with him in his dreams. Jimmy woke each morning with the energy that came from uninterrupted restful sleep. He awoke with the sense that through the night he had gained some kind of enlightenment; the sense that he had had things revealed to him which made everything seem so much clearer. What was clearer, or what information he had gained, he couldn’t rightly say. But he just felt clearer, more enlightened, more well rested. 

All of this ran completely at odds with the environment in which he was living. Amelia was treating him like a ticking time bomb that might explode at any moment and keeping Claire away from him as much as possible. She spoke to him only when strictly necessary and when she did it was in a painfully gentle voice that was worse than her anger had ever been. Jimmy struggled to feel the correct sense of pain and loss that this should have motivated in him. He knew how he should feel and the feelings were certainly there but it was as though there was a barrier between them and him. It was unsettling. At least, it should have been. 

As a result, the voice in Jimmy’s head that suggested denying everything and coming up with some sort of cover story for his strange behaviour was a very quiet one. The much louder voice declared that he could never deny God and that he would just have to accept the consequences of his faith. He would not make the mistake that Peter made.

Dr Holloway’s office was about as stereotypical as a psychiatrists office could get. Despite being located in a relatively modern concrete pillar of a building, the room was wood panelled and lined with oak bookcases filled with books that had titles like Mastering the Unconcious: A brief introduction and The role of hypnosis in modern psychiatry. The desk that stood under the wide square window was large, imposing, antique looking and obsessively neat. The armchair and sofa were cracked dark leather, well-worn and comfortable looking. Dr Holloway himself suited his work space perfectly. A tall, thin man with a receding hair line and small wire glasses his expression was one of unwavering calm and his handshake was limp. He sat in one of the armchairs, note pad resting on his knee and surveyed them with a soft smile. 

Jimmy sat on one side of the sofa, feeling far too relaxed while Amelia was nervously perched on the extreme edge of the other side. 

“Is it alright with you, Jimmy, that your wife joins us for our discussion?” Dr Holloway asked mildly. 

“Of course,” said Jimmy. He stopped himself from adding that it was entirely for her benefit that he was there. 

“So what can I help you with?” Holloway continued, in his blandly pleasant tone.

“Well…”Jimmy wasn’t really sure what to say. There wasn’t anything he felt he needed help with but he felt certain that that statement would not set the right tone for this conversation. He glanced over at Amelia; she was watching his face closely. He changed tack, “Amelia feels that…”

“Jimmy…” she said softly and sadly.

Jimmy ploughed on, “Amelia feels that some of my recent, behaviour, has been a little out of character.”

“A little out of character?” she said, incredulous, “A little out of character? Jimmy, I can home to find you putting your hand in a pot of boiling water!”

“But I’m fine,” he insisted, displaying his unburnt hands to Dr Holloway who raised one eyebrow ever so slightly and looked to Amelia.

“Jimmy. You told me you did it because an angel told you to.”

He saw Dr Holloway’s eyes flick back to him. A small note was made on the note pad. 

“An angel did tell me to do it. To test my faith,” he saw Amelia look imploringly at Dr Holloway, “Oh come on, would you rather I had lied?”

Dr Holloway jumped in before Amelia could retort, “Let’s go back a bit shall me. Jimmy, why don’t you tell me what happened. In your own words.”

“I was cooking dinner. He spoke to me, Castiel spoke to me, and asked me if I could prove my faith. He said that I should put my hand in the water. He told me a man of faith would be protected and I was. He was testing me. There’s something he wants me to do.”

“And who is Castiel?”

“He’s an angel of the Lord.”

Dr Holloway nodded thoughtfully, “And how does he communicate with you?”

“He talks to me. He was using electrics, the TV, the radio, to start with but now I just hear him.”

“And you only hear him? You don’t see him?”

“I see him in my dreams,” said Jimmy, realising for the first time that this was true. Though again, he wouldn’t have been able to describe with any clarity what it was that he had seen but he had a distinct sense that he had seen him.

Dr Holloway was still nodding away but taking notes now as well. “Can you tell me more about why he was testing you?”

“I…I’m not sure exactly why,” Jimmy admitted. “It’s not for me to question the word of our Lord,” he continued, a little defensively, “If I prove my faith and prove myself worthy then all will be revealed.”

Amelia’s eyes were fixed on Jimmy’s face and he was finding it slightly off putting. She was hanging on to every word as Dr Holloway questioned him in detail about the nature of the voice, how and when he heard it. He seemed intrigued by Jimmy’s description of the initial fits and seemed to take Jimmy’s suggestion that these were early communication attempts seriously. Jimmy didn’t know if it was going well or not but Dr Holloway hadn’t dismissed anything that Jimmy had said so far as insanity and he was hopeful that perhaps Dr Holloway was also a believer who would somehow recognise the truth of Jimmy’s words. 

“Are you a happy man?” Dr Holloway asked suddenly.

The abrupt change of direction confused Jimmy.

“Happy?” he repeated.

“Yes. Are you happy?”

Jimmy blinked for a moment or two, “Of course I’m happy.”

“Satisfied? With your life?”

“Yes,” said Jimmy, not liking this new line of questioning at all.

“What about work? How do you feel about work?”

Jimmy shrugged. “It can be stressful,” he admitted, “But I enjoy my work.”

Dr Holloway nodded again. Jimmy was starting to find the habit irritating. It was like something in the doctors neck was broken and his head was teetering backwards and forwards on the brink of disaster. He turned to Amelia, “Is there anything else that you’ve noticed in your husband’s behaviour that we haven’t mentioned yet?”

Amelia seemed hesitant for a moment, but then the floodgates opened. “It’s like he’s a completely different man!” she said. “I don’t know him at all. He used to be so reliable. Now…” she shook her head, “I never know where he’s going to be or what kind of mood he’ll be in. Our daughter hardly seems him. He used to spend so much time with her! Now…she’s scared of him!”

Jimmy flinched. He had known that Claire was more reluctant to be near him than she had been before but he wouldn’t have phrased it so bluntly. It wasn’t fear, it was just typical teenage denial of the adult world. She didn’t want to deal with her parents grown up issues. He didn’t blame her.

“Can you be a bit more specific? What exactly is making her afraid?” Holloway prompted. 

“It’s hard to put your finger on,” Amelia said. “It’s like he’s not always totally there with us. He seems far away, like something else is taking up all his attention. Sometimes, he looks at us and I’m not sure he knows where he is or who we are.”

Her voice broke slightly on the last statement and she paused giving Jimmy time to try and process her words. Holloway scribbled busily in the background. Jimmy wasn’t aware that he had seemed that distant. He had spent a lot of time in the last couple of weeks thinking and, to a certain degree, listening out for the voice, for communication but he had been present. He couldn’t have been that mentally distant and not noticed. Could he?

“I thought he was on drugs at first,” Amelia continued, “but then he started talking about this angel and now…now I don’t know, there must be something seriously wrong. I mean, it’s crazy!”

“I’m not crazy,” said Jimmy.

“Sticking your hand in boiling water because the voice in your head told you to do it is crazy Jimmy!”

“He protected me!” Jimmy declared, starting to feel a little angry himself for the first time. He had sympathy with the fact that on first hearing the story it did sound a little insane.  
Of course it did. But he couldn’t understand why they were missing what was totally obvious. If it was just insanity, the water would have burned him. It hadn’t. What other explanation was there for that? It could only have been divine intervention. If they could just see and accept that they would realise that Jimmy was telling them the truth. 

Dr Holloway spoke again in his calm smooth way, “I don’t think crazy is the word we should be using. I don’t want either of you to think of it in that way. We are talking about illnesses here. Illnesses like any other.”

“Illnesses?” Jimmy repeated as all hopes that Dr Holloway would understand evaporated in an instant. 

“Yes,” said Dr Holloway calmly. “Now, obviously any definitive diagnosis takes a certain amount of assessment and time…”

Jimmy stopped listening. All that he was hearing was that the doctor did not believe him and agreed with Amelia that there was something mentally wrong with him. Yet again Jimmy was confronted with the possibility that there was something wrong with him. That it was all an illusion. But of course that couldn’t be the case. The lack of burn aside, there was his father’s warning to consider. There was the strange behaviour of the TV and the radio…those things were not things that he had imagined. No. Besides, he didn’t think that hallucinating would make him feel this good. He felt better than he had ever done. The doubts were there and the uncertainty but it was all pinned on a certainty that he was walking along God’s preordained path. That was not, he thought, what a hallucination would feel like.

Holloway was talking about hospital admissions and further assessment and possible conditions. The word psychosis came up several times. The words seemed primarily addressed to Amelia who kept darting nervous glances at Jimmy who sat, hands pressed together, pulse steadily rising as he imagined how he might escape any scenario which involved an attempt to hospitalise him. 

“Hospital? I know he’s not well,” Amelia was saying, “but that seems a little bit drastic.”

Dr Holloway spread his hands in a defensive gesture in front of him, still smiling. “That would be the quickest way forward,” he said. “But if you don’t want to do that…”

“We don’t,” said Jimmy quickly, feeling that his opinion should also be coming to bear in this situation. “Look at me Amelia. Look at me.” He reached for her hand and took it in his. She was having trouble looking at him. “Amelia, I’m fine. Let’s just go home. Ok? I’m not sick. I’m fine.”

“How can you say that?”

“Because I am! I feel wonderful. Since Castiel started talking to me I have felt more happy and alive than I ever have before. Stop fighting that. Let me share it with you.” He was sounding desperate even to his own ears but he had to make her understand why she was so badly misinterpreting the state of things.

The tears that had been welling up in her eyes for the entirety of the conversation finally escaped down her cheeks. When she spoke her voice was hard. “Abraham was asked to sacrifice Isaac as a test of faith,” she said, “If Castiel asked you to hurt our daughter would you?”

Jimmy was left speechless. It was the worst question, the cruellest question that she could have asked. It was also the most appropriate. The question was, essentially, how far he would go to prove his faith. He hadn’t ever really considered how far the tests might go. He wanted to say, emphatically, that he would never do anything to harm their daughter. He wanted to say that such a thing would never be asked of him, why would it be? But both of those things were impossible. He might one day be asked to harm his daughter and could he with any certainty say that that wasn’t for the greater good. Perhaps, in sacrificing his daughter he could do some kind of greater in this world and simultaneously assure her a place in heaven. He didn’t want to hurt Claire. Of course he didn’t. But….it wasn’t that simple. It wasn’t just about what he wanted.

He had to choose his words carefully. “It isn’t for me to question God’s will,” he said.

A look of horror crossed Amelia’s face, it was closely followed by an expression of horror and despair. “Then I know you’re not ok. You’re sick Jimmy. Really sick.”

Jimmy knew then that he had lost control of this situation. He wasn’t going to convince Amelia at this point that there was nothing wrong with him. He was going to have to find a way to share his experience with her or something more drastic because just telling her clearly wasn’t working.

Dr Holloway tried his best to convince Amelia that hospitalisation was the way forward. He warned that Jimmy’s admission made him a danger to himself and others and that was worthy of hospital admission. For whatever reason, Amelia still wasn’t ready to take that drastic step. Instead, she got the doctor to agree to prescribe Jimmy some medication that he hoped would help keep the voice of Castiel at bay while making them promise to attend a referral at the local hospital. He assured Amelia, in an undertone which Jimmy could only imagine he didn’t think Jimmy could hear, that after Jimmy’s admission that he might hurt their daughter that he had more than enough justification to exercise more forceful powers. 

As they left the office Amelia clutched the prescription like a lifeline. She could barely look at Jimmy. Jimmy trailed back to the car behind her. In a strange way he felt like a child again. Being dragged around and told that things were for his own good. It was unsettling. Not only were they calling into question his sanity but they were also questioning his fundamental ability to look after himself on the most basic level. By extension, they were of course also questioning his ability to look after anyone else. Jimmy wasn’t overly a traditionalist. He didn’t believe that a woman’s place was in the kitchen or that women couldn’t do anything for themselves or anything like that. He wasn’t sexist. But he did pride himself on the fact that he had always been able to provide a decent living for his family and he had prided himself on the fact that while so many families were imploding around them in this more complicated modern age his family was held together. He’d always thought that that had something to do with the fact that he had fulfilled the traditional role of husband and father to the fest of his ability. That wasn’t his entire identity but it was a substantial part and now that was being taken away from him for no good reason. He could still go to work. He could still do his job. He could still cook and look after Claire and do all the things he always had done if they would just let him do it. And now, now he was able to offer his family something that he had never been able to before; he could offer them spiritual enlightenment. 

Amelia refused to talk to him throughout their entire drive home, despite Jimmy’s best efforts. “I don’t want to hear it,” she repeated, over and over again. 

Once they had returned to their home, Amelia paused in the hallway as she was hanging her coat on the hook she turned to look at him with eyes that were dark and totally closed off from him.

“I think it would be best,” she said, “If you didn’t spend any time alone with Claire. Just…just until we get things figured out.”

Jimmy was appalled, “What do you think I’m going to do to her?”

“I don’t know,” she replied sadly, “And that’s what scares me.” 

Then she disappeared upstairs and after a few moments Jimmy heard the door to their bedroom close sharply. Standing there, alone in the hallway with the deafening silence of the house and his mind echoing around him, for the first time the warm glow that had been keeping him going wasn’t enough. He went into the kitchen and scrabbled around in the odds and ends draw that was packed with bits and pieces of paper and elastic bands and spare shoelaces and all sorts of things that had no other proper home. There, in the back, there was a small bunch of keys the majority of which had no known use. 

Keys in hand he went into the dining room and to the large oak cabinet that a relative had bought Amelia as a wedding gift. It was hideous and they both hated it but if they had gotten rid of it Amelia’s family would probably never have forgiven them. The top portion was a glass display case filled with elegant crystal champagne flutes, bits and pieces of family silver and the odd ornament. The bottom portion of the cabinet was solid and remained permanently locked. Not having opened the cabinet in years it took a series of attempts before Jimmy found the correct key and got the cabinet unlocked. The door swung forward stiffly and stubbornly. 

Here were the things that they had kept because they might once be wanted but they were not things that they wanted easily accessible for their daughter. There was an old pistol, handed down through the families. Jimmy was convinced it didn’t work anymore but Amelia had forbidden him to find out. There were some old albums with some quite risqué Victorian post cards in that had been collected by one of Jimmy’s relatives. They could be valuable someday was the constant mantra when they justified keeping them. Jimmy wasn’t after any of these. He was after the barely touched bottles of whiskey that was nestling at the back. 

Neither Amelia nor Jimmy really approved of the drinking of spirits. Beer was one thing but spirits quite another. They had the whiskey because on one occasion, many years ago, one of Jimmy’s bosses had been a keen drinker of whiskey. They’d bought the bottle when they’d invited him to dinner and then stashed it away in case he visited again. He never had but the bottle had remained with them.

Jimmy took the bottle, returned to the kitchen and poured himself a generous glass. Nothing had driven Jimmy to drink in many years but he thought that, after the day he’d had, he could probably be forgiven. After drinking the first glass and wincing at the foul taste, he took both bottle and glass with him into the TV room and settled in for the night. He didn’t think he was going to be welcome upstairs any time soon.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am no expert in the way that mental illness of the kind suggested by Jimmy’s symptoms are handled and I am fully aware that this will not be an accurate depiction of the way mental illness is treated. I am trying to be fairly vague and I am not intending to represent any particular illness or medication in this story. Just a little disclaimer!

Chapter Nine

There was something completely surreal about standing in a pharmacy waiting for a prescription that had made the pharmacist give him the kind of look that most people reserve for gangs of teenagers loitering on street corners at night. He’d never in his life made anyone look at him with that kind of wariness. He’d always been relatively nondescript. He’d been called handsome before, but the thought that he was attractive made him uncomfortable so he did very little to enhance whatever natural benefits he might have. Normally, people didn’t look at him twice. He was solid, he was boring, he was nothing to take note of. Now, evidently, there was something for people to feel concerned about and something for them to take notice of. Jimmy hurried out of the pharmacy as quickly as he could.

As soon as Jimmy got home he went into the kitchen and handed Amelia the pills. Amelia practically tore open the white pharmacy package and read the instructions of the side of the little white pill bottle. She had forced him to go pick up the prescription as soon as the pharmacy opened that morning and seemed to still firmly believe that as soon as Jimmy was taking the medication all would be well. 

“It says you can start taking them whenever you want but you just have to take them regularly,” she glanced at her watch. “Ten o’clock,” she said. “It’s as good a time as any.”

Jimmy was surprised to see that her hand shook slightly as she held the bottle out to him. He took it and looked at it properly for the first time. The name was long and complicated and he was sure he wouldn’t have been able to pronounce it if he tried. He twisted the cap off and tipped one of the pills out into his hand. It was an innocuous little thing really, a red and yellow capsule. He wondered at how Amelia could think that something this small would be the answer to all her problems. 

He glanced up. She was standing, with the now empty package clutched against her chest watching him eagerly. She looked tired, with dark circles under her eyes and worried creases on her forehead and at the corners of her mouth. There were tendrils escaping from her normally neat hair do and, in short, she looked like someone with the weight of the world on her shoulders. Jimmy’s heart ached for her. He didn’t want her to suffer. He hated to see her suffering. With a silent prayer that a moment’s weakness wouldn’t be held against him he poured himself a glass of water and swallowed the pill.

The relief was immediately visible on Amelia’s face. She had clearly been steeling herself for a battle. She took a deep breath and watched him critically for a few moments, as though she expected to see an instant change. When nothing happened, she reached forward and gave his hand a quick squeeze.

“You’ll feel better soon,” she said, with a quick, thin smile. Then she disappeared and he could hear her climbing the stairs to their bedroom.

Jimmy did not feel better soon. Far from it. As the bottle instructed him to he took another dose on the evening of the first day. He went to sleep feeling fine; he woke up feeling like he was coming down with the flu. His head ached and felt stuffed with cotton wool. Within minutes of waking up he was kneeling in the bathroom throwing up violently. For the first time in a long while Amelia fussed over him like she would have done before. Jimmy felt good about that at least, until she greeted the end of the vomiting by handing him the pill bottle and a glass of water. 

The next two weeks were simultaneously the most and least pleasant Jimmy had experienced in recent months. On the one hand, some things started to return to normal. Satisfied that Jimmy was taking the pills every morning and every evening as instructed Amelia allowed Jimmy to start spending time with Claire again. One evening Claire was upstairs, in her room, the next she was downstairs in her old place in the sitting room. She was wary of Jimmy at first, but after he showed no signs of being anything other than her father she warmed to him again. 

Similarly, Amelia suggested that he return to work after a day or two of ‘seeming more like himself’ as she put it. Again, after an initially chilly reception he was treated by his colleagues as though he had never left. He found himself in the strange position where, suddenly, it was almost as thought his life was just as it had been before anything had happened.

There were some differences of course. Jimmy had appointments with a psychiatrist to attend. Dr Holloway asked him probing questions about his thoughts and feelings. He asked about Jimmy’s childhood, his relationship with his parents, all kinds of things. Jimmy had never been a man much given to personal introspection and he answered reluctantly to say the least. Dr Holloway observed early on that Jimmy was not inclined towards talking therapy. 

“Your wife seems to think that you’re back to your old self,” he observed, after more than half of their third session had been spent in near total silence with only the odd halting response to a searching question.

Jimmy shrugged. He was sitting in one of Dr Holloway’s comfortable old arm chairs staring idly at the books on the shelves and trying not to look at the clock as the seconds ticked by with agonising slowness.

“She says you haven’t mentioned anything about angels since you started taking the medication.”

Jimmy nodded.

“Why is that?”

“Because I haven’t heard anything from the angels,” said Jimmy, sadly. 

That was the fundamental problem of course. He hadn’t. There had been silence. He hadn’t heard a single word from Castiel or even had the impression that he had been trying to communicate. That was what was stopping all being well. 

“Why do you think that is?” Dr Holloway asked.

“Because I didn’t keep the faith,” was Jimmy’s tired reply. He shifted so he was looking Holloway straight in the eye. “All the angel asked of me was that I trust in him and show my faith. When I took the medication I showed that I didn’t have faith.”

Dr Holloway nodded with a look of understanding on his face. “You believe you failed.” 

“They had a task for me,” said Jimmy slowly, “and I wasn’t good enough.”

“Do you often feel like you’re not good enough?”

Jimmy looked up sharply before smiling wryly. It was a good lead into a more sensitive line of questioning, he’d give Dr Holloway credit for that. It didn’t, however, make him any more inclined to answer the question, so he didn’t. Dr Holloway didn’t push it and Jimmy went home again having succeeded in not unburdening himself yet again.  
It wasn’t like he had anything to unburden anyway. Jimmy had dug through all of his difficulties in his late teens and early twenties. He had raged against his lot in life, he had questioned himself and the world around him and he had found his answers in God. He didn’t need a man with an expensive degree to pick apart his mind.

During the drive home Jimmy couldn’t stop thinking about the angel, Castiel. He had done everything the angel asked; he had never asked Jimmy not to take the medication. But perhaps that was implied. Perhaps it was something that he should just have known. The small print in the contract that no one reads but should be common sense. But angels weren’t that vindictive. They weren’t meant to be that vindictive. If he was given another test he would prove himself again. He was worthy, he knew he was worthy. But did being worthy really mean that he had to sacrifice his family? There were plenty of biblical figures who were allowed to keep their families. Why should he be any different? The medication didn’t affect his faith. It just made Amelia feel better, feel safer, was that so wrong?

Jimmy parked the car outside the house and found himself frozen and unable to get out of the car. He wanted to have his family. He really did. But he wanted to be close to God. He wanted to do God’s work. He wanted the angels to come back. He wrestled with these two opposing desires for a few moments. He wasn’t sure that he had reached a decision until that evening. When Amelia handed him the pills, he only pretended to swallow them before washing them down the drain.   
He did the same the next day. And the next. And the next. And gradually, gradually he became aware of a change. He felt more sensitive. He felt like there was a clarity returning to his vision and to his thought. Things seemed to shimmer and shiver to the things that he saw and heard. It was like there was another level to everything. He wasn’t sure if he’d seen everything that way before but he certainly did now. 

And he prayed. He prayed every morning, squeezing his eyes shut at every possible moment and shouting in his mind, begging for the angel Castiel to hear him and return to him. He also stopped off at the church every day after work. He knelt in the front row, alternating from fixing his eyes onto the large cross behind the alter and fixing them to his hands in a picture of devotion. It wasn’t possible that no one could hear him. 

Amelia noticed the change even though Jimmy was sure to leave work a little early to disguise his daily church visits. He was probably trying too hard to behave normally. So she became more watchful. He only kept up the deception for a week.

It was evening. Late. Jimmy was sitting on the sofa downstairs watching some pointless late night television. He felt surprisingly serene. He was starting to feel like his prayers were getting closer to getting through, he felt close to a break through. 

Amelia came in with a serious look on her face. In one hand she held the pill bottle, in the other…she unfurled it and presented its contents to him. It was a small white pill, wet and slightly dissolved. It was probably the pill that he had most recently tried to dispose of. 

“How long Jimmy?” she asked. Her voice was very tight.

“A week,” he replied.

“A week?” her voice rose slightly, “A week? But Jimmy…you were doing so well.”

“No, no Amelia I wasn’t.”

“Yes, yes you were,” she said urgently. “You were going to work, you were spending time with Claire. You were, you were you again.”

“Perhaps,” Jimmy allowed. “But what does that matter when the angels aren’t talking to me anymore?”

Amelia closed her eyes for a moment, like she was trying hard to keep her patience. “Angels aren’t talking to you,” she said slowly and firmly. 

“They were.”

“No they weren’t. You are sick Jimmy! You need to take your pills.” She shook them at him to emphasise the point. 

“You have faith,” said Jimmy. “You believe in the Lord and his word. Why don’t you believe in this?”

“Because angels don’t talk to people like us! God does not talk to people like us. Why would he? We’re just normal people.” She was practically shouting. 

“The apostles were fishermen,” Jimmy shot back.

“You are not a fisherman. You sell ad time on the radio!”

Jimmy fell silent. He was slightly hurt. He had had sufficient doubts about his worthiness. He didn’t think he was better than anyone else, but to have his wife standing in front of him and telling him that he was unworthy of heavenly attention was a bit of a slap in the face. There was also the implication that somehow what he did was mundane and low level and ordinary and it might be but it had always provided for his family. He had always done well for them and now it was as though Amelia was dismissing all that.

Amelia seemed to sense that she had gone a little too far. She turned away, composing herself, then turned back. “Jimmy, I love you. You know I do. All I want is my husband back. I want the man I married back. The sensible, reliable man who always looked after us, who you could always rely on in a crisis. A good man. A humble man.”

“I’m still a good man,” said Jimmy. He was finding it hard to control his voice as well now. “I haven’t done anything to hurt you, or Claire.”

“We’ve been so scared…”

“So have I!” Jimmy interrupted her. “Do you think I’m doing this because it’s fun? I know I’m loosing you and that terrifies me.”

“So take the pills, please. That’s all I’m asking.” She came and sat down next to him, grabbed his hand and squeezed it hard. “Please.”

Jimmy looked at her. He looked at their hands entwined. He shook his head slowly. “I’m sorry Amelia, but a messenger of God has asked me to do something. I can’t say no to a messenger of God. I am a man of faith.”

Amelia dropped his hand like she’d been scolded. She stood up slowly and stiffly. She took a few steps towards the door and then she turned around abruptly. She held the pills out. 

“I’m going to ask you one for time to take these pills,” she said. Then as Jimmy started to shake his head she ploughed on, talking fast, getting the words out before she could regret them. “If you don’t. I’m going to take Claire and we’re going to go to my mothers and we won’t be coming back. You need help Jimmy.”

She left. Jimmy put his head in his hands and for the first time tears came into his eyes and he cried. He cried bitterly but silently, letting the tears roll down his cheeks and drip onto the floor. 

“Do not despair.”

Jimmy’s head jerked up as Castiel’s voice resonated through his body, awakening every one of his newly sensitive nerves. He sat, listening intently, hoping and praying that he hadn’t imagined it, hoping and praying that he was linked up again. 

“Do not despair Jimmy Novak. You will undergo great trials in the process of doing God’s work. That is why your faith must be tested.”

Jimmy gave a short, dark laugh. “I don’t mean to sound ungrateful,” he said, not quite able to believe his daring, “But doing God’s work is losing me my entire life and I don’t even know what work it is you want me to do.”

“It is not your place to question God,” the voice said severely. 

Jimmy flinched. “I’m sorry,” he said, a little more humbly. “I just want to know what you want me for.”

“All will be revealed when the time is right,” the voice assured him. “When the time is right.”


	10. Chapter 10

Chapter Ten

When Castiel had said that all would be revealed when the time was right Jimmy had thought that that would come at some point in the future. In fact, things were to come to their head a lot sooner. Things came to a head the next evening. The following morning Amelia offered him the pills as he settled down to have his breakfast. His heart pounded as he shook his head. She pursed her lips until they became so thin they were barely visible. 

“Claire and I will pack our things this evening,” she said hoarsely. 

With those worlds Jimmy could almost feel the world crumbling around him. There was a rushing in his ears. His heart was pounding. His vision blurred. The only thing keeping him upright was the mantra that he kept repeating in his head. 

I have faith. I have faith. I have faith. 

He had been promised that all would be revealed to him when the time was right and so it would be. He just had to believe in it. Then when all was revealed he would be able to explain things to Amelia properly and she would understand. All would be well. He just had to keep the faith.

It was a normal day. Lily, the department secretary, greeted him with chatter and some snippets of gossip about others in the office. The coffee machine broke and lunch was spent with is colleagues as they complained about that fact. He answered emails, made phone calls, attended meetings. He spent half an hour fighting a printer jam. It was just a normal day.

Never the less, throughout the day Jimmy was aware of a growing sense that something was coming. It wasn’t just the cold ball of leaden dread sitting in the base of his stomach in anticipation of the fulfilment of Amelia’s threat. There was something else. The hypersensitivity that he had noticed in the week since stopping the medication was becoming more pronounced. The whole world seemed to hum. Everything he touched seemed to vibrate; it was like he could feel the individual atoms moving. 

And he could hear something. Though hearing might be the wrong word. There was something, just on the very edge of his senses like there was a very faint sound and he was straining to hear it. It was like a pull. There was something there and he was being pulled towards it and so, even though his day was completely normal, he felt increasingly restless and like something was coming. 

When he came home that evening he followed the sounds of activity to their bedroom and stood in the doorway watching uneasily as Amelia stuffed clothes into a suitcase that lay open on the bed. She didn’t acknowledge that he was there but her movements became a little more frantic and she slammed the drawers of the dresser a little more. After a while, she straightened up and looked him in the eye. 

“Did you want something?” she asked. Her voice was cold, but also gentle and tired. 

“When are you leaving?” he asked. He was surprised by how steady his voice was. 

“After dinner,” said Amelia. “I don’t want Claire to think that anything strange is happening. I want to talk to her about it when…when we’re not here.”

Jimmy nodded. Amelia and Claire often went to visit the grandparents; they normally left in the evenings so that the three of them could still have their family time together. It made sense. It would make their leaving quiet and calm and that would be best for Claire. It wasn’t best for him though. Jimmy wasn’t sure that he could keep up the façade. 

“You can still change your mind,” she said, as Jimmy turned away. He didn’t answer. 

Jimmy walked along the hallway and down to Claire’s bedroom. The door was ajar as it always was unless she was asleep. He pushed it open slightly more and looked in. Claire was sitting at her desk, headphones firmly in place, scribbling away at what looked like homework of some kind with a look of intense concentration on her face.

Jimmy looked around the room. It was still very much a little girls room. Jimmy could remember painting the walls pale pink when, aged around four, Claire had demanded they do something about the gender neutral yellow that they had selected before she was born. He could remember the day when he had had to build in shelves because Claire had developed a ferocious reading appetite and had outgrown her tiny bookshelf of children’s books. He could remember so much, there were so many memories in that room and he was paralysed for a moment by the fear that there would never be any new memories formed there. 

Claire noticed that he was standing there, she pulled her headphones out and smiled up at him. “Hey Dad!” she said, brightly and easily.

“Hey Claire,” he replied, trying to smile. 

She narrowed her eyes for a second, “Is everything ok?” she asked.

“Yeah. Yeah, everything’s fine. I was just…” he searched desperately for a legitimate reason to be hovering in her doorway, “I just wanted to check how school was today,” he finished lamely.

She gave him a funny look, “School was fine Dad.”

“Good, good,” he smiled at her almost stepped forward to give her a hug but thought better of it and turned away abruptly. 

Jimmy floated around the downstairs of the house, drifting from room to room, constantly aware of the noise of Amelia packing over his head. His restlessness grew, his frustration grew. He was only a few hours away from losing his family, the time was ticking by and he was waiting pointlessly for something to happen. He was just watching and waiting because he believed that some sort of divine intervention would fix everything. That just wasn’t going to happen.

On a sudden impulse he spun round and started up the stairs. He was going to talk to Amelia, he was going to take the medication he was going to… He only got half way before all of that fell by the wayside. It was like he’d run into an invisible barrier and it brought him up short. He froze on the stairs. His heart was beating a mile a minute and adrenaline was coursing through his veins. He stumbled back down the stairs and stood in the hallway shaking.

He couldn’t be there. He couldn’t be there to watch his family leave him. He had to get out. He grabbed the first coat that he could from the hooks by the door and pulled it on. It was his trench coat. The one that Amelia thought looked ridiculous. He thought that was oddly fitting.

After deciding on this course of action he made it out the door, across the porch and down the steps before he froze. Absurdly, the first thing he noticed when he ground to a halt was the fact that he was cold. He took half a step back towards the house. He stopped. He ran his hands through his hair and across his face. He didn’t know what to do. He felt trapped and like he couldn’t breathe.

“Castiel,” he said, speaking out loud despite what anyone passing might think of him, “If you can hear me, tell me what you want from me now. I…” he stopped. Shook his head and looked to the sky. “I can’t do this anymore. I have to know what it is that I’m losing my family for.”

There was a pause that stretched out for what felt like an eternity. Jimmy’s head dropped forward and he let out a groan that was born out of sheer despair. He felt like he was really going mad. 

“Castiel…” he began again.

Then, “Jimmy Novak. You have been chosen.”

“Chosen for what?” Jimmy demanded. 

“I have God’s work to complete on Earth. However, my power is limited when I am without a vessel. Within you there is the blood of a great prophet. This means that you are one of the few humans whose bodies are able to contain an angelic form. I have been testing your faith, Jimmy Novak, because you have been chosen to be the vessel of an angel of the Lord. What say you?”

Jimmy was stunned. There were several thoughts running through his mind. The first, about the bloodline, would probably explain his Father’s comments. He wondered if the angels had approached him and asked him to be a vessel at some point in his life. His warning ran through his mind and he wondered what exactly had happened to him to make him think that listening to the angels was a path to disaster. The second thought was, vessel…he had a vague notion of what that meant but he wasn’t entirely sure…

Castiel responded without Jimmy speaking any of his doubts out loud. “I require the use of your body Jimmy,” he said. 

“And what happens to me? While you’re in my body?”

“You will be present. You will be conscious at times and unconscious at others. It will be like you are sleeping. And dreaming. My actions and all that happens to your body will be like a dream.”

Jimmy thought hard. This at least was a task that he could complete. He could fulfil God’s desire, he could be a servant of God. Who knew what tasks it was that Castiel needed to perform? Jimmy’s body may allow the opportunity for thousands of people to be saved, he might allow for the healing of others, he might allow for all kinds of wonderful things. Did he have any right to deny the people who might be reached and saved that salvation for the sake of his own comfort? It would be like a dream. A dream. He could deal with that. There was just one thing that was niggling at him. 

“My family. Will they be safe while I’m gone?” he asked. 

“Your family will be watched over and provided for by the agents of heaven,” was the smooth reply.

Jimmy hesitated a few moments longer before spreading his hands in a submissive gesture. 

“Alright. I’ll do it.”

At first nothing happened and Jimmy was struck by the horrible fear that this was proof that he was simply insane and this was all just in his mind. Then, without warning, it was like he was struck by lightning. The heat was unimaginable, unbearable, he felt like his body was being torn apart. There was a crackling of energy in the air, an intense pressure running through his body. He lost all control of his lims, his arms spread, his head was thrown back and everything was lost in an incredible burst of bright bright white light. 

Then blackness.

And then, slowly, slowly his vision returned. Sensation returned. But, while he could still see as he had seen before he had a strange feeling of floating, of disconnection, things were all slightly vague. He was aware that his head was moving, his hands were moving but he was not moving them. Out of habit, he tried to reach up and rub his eyes to get rid of some of the fog. Nothing happened. His hand didn’t move. Jimmy tried not to panic but couldn’t stop himself. He called desperately for all his limbs to respond but none of  
them did. 

He was being flooded with regret. Why had he volunteered for this? Why had he allowed someone else to take control of his body? Why?

He heard the sound of the door opening like it was something very far away.

“Daddy!” It was Claire’s voice. She must have seen him outside and come outside too. 

Jimmy felt his body turn and then he saw his daughter, standing on the porch looking at him in confusion. Jimmy’s head was tipped to one side as, Jimmy could only assume, Castiel tried to make sense of what he was seeing.

“Daddy?” Claire repeated, a question in her voice this time.

Claire, Jimmy tried to say, but he had no voice and there was no sound and his soul ached with longing.

“I am not your father.” 

The voice came from Jimmy’s body but it was not Jimmy’s voice. It was deeper, harsher, mechanical. That was shocking enough. But the way that Claire’s face crumpled with confusion, fear and sadness at that proclamation struck into Jimmy’s very core. 

He tried to struggle.

He tried to scream. 

He tried to grab control back of HIS body. Of HIS mind. Of himself. 

As he wrestled, Castiel, the angel, who was now in control of the body walked awkwardly away from the house. 

“Be at peace Jimmy,” Castiel said. “We have God’s work to do.”

And with each step, Jimmy felt his grip on consciousness weakening and he slipped into unconsciousness. Jimmy was gone. He was Castiel now. 

End.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that is the end of my attempt at fleshing out the events that lead to Jimmy Novak becoming Castiel's vessel. Thank you for reading!


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